<VV> Head Lights Switch - story, some humor

[Bryan Blackwell]

A great tip below from Smitty.  On the '66, we've had no tail lights for a while - not a big deal in the summer, but kind of a pain now, especially when one of the kids wants to take it out for the evening.  This car has the usual late model windshield rust, so I figured it was the switch or connections there were corroded.  I had the car in the carport doing a couple other things and read this, so Stefan (#1 son) and I went out and metered the fuse block.  Couldn't find any problem.  Bummer.

Today Trevor (#2 son) and I were at our club meeting when another member was asking about hooking up a Pertronix.  "Well," I sez, "you can hook it up direct to the coil, but to get 12 volts what you do is run a wire from this body connector right here."  As I said that, my eyes fell on the body connector.  That's right, the one that was partially disconnected.  I pushed it back together and had Trevor pull out the knob.  Lights!

You should have seen the look Trevor gave me :-)

--Bryan

On Nov 17, 2010, at 3:08 PM, Smitty wrote:

> Smitty Says;   I am very sorry I didn't recognize the significance of the thread on the Late tail lights not working.  I went through a major hair pulling evolution not two months ago and came up with the same answers.  Of course My problem was with an Early and I didn't follow closely the post on VV.    I think that any effort to troubleshoot a lights problem has to start with the understanding that the lights switch is divided in half as far as power delivery goes. The two sides are isolated from one another with no conections between the two.  The side with the "green" wire you have been talking about is un fused with power from the fuse block.  It powers up the headlights and front park lights. (just the fronts).  The side with the orange wire is fused incoming power from the block and feeds the dome light, dash lights and tail lights.