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The circuit board is not at fault, it's the little copper foil parts where the connector "pincer" pieces come into contact. The foil areas get oxidized and sometimes burnt, so the contact "pincers" fail to do the job.
There are five operational lights on each side (may be only four on the right side). Left side top row is turn signal, reverse light, fog light. Bottom row is marker/brake light, no light, marker light.
Sometime after 1988 one side fog light was disabled. Dunno what year. (BTW those lights are controlled by a rocker switch right below the headlight switch. Headlights must be on for the fogs to light up.)
Of the five, only the marker lights and brake lights are in the bulb failure warning system, and therefore, like the turn signals, they have a separate wire for each side. The fog lights and reverse lights do not.
On the left side contact part of the circuit board, the contact point for fog lights and reverse lights is double width. The wire from "up front" goes to one of the pincers, and right next to it is the wire going over to the right side lamp. To see those foil contact parts you will need a mirror, and a flashlight helps.
I have that problem on my 1986 244. Here's what I did to get one reverse light to work. Open open the connector. Wires of the same color and adjacent to one another are for the same thing - fog lights(white) or reverse lights(black).
Swap them. It's the foil part under the wire from "up front" that gets burnt. So, voltage from up front gets to the little pincer. It is supposed to connect to the circuit board, and via the double width, go out to the same light on the other side. But it can't because the pincer is touching a bad spot.
So putting the wire from "up front" into the spot over a good part of the foil, you will get that light on the left side but not the right side. And, one reverse light is better than none, right? Works for me, anyway.
Now, is there a way to repair the burnt spot on the foil? I don't know. Maybe some engineering type (like Don Foster) has a way. Anyone who figured out a slick way to clean the ignition wires (in the dishwasher) may have figured out this fix. Maybe a variation of re-soldering.
AND - check the colors of the lower outer bulb holders on the right and the left. They MUST be white on the right, black on the left. If that's not your case, weird things can happen.
AND ALSO - unscrew and re-attach the ground wire. A little oxidation in there can mess things up, too.
Good Luck,
Bob
;>)
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