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Electrical problem with road lights. Help please

P

paul_374300602

Last night driving home from France we were flashed a couple of times. We pulled over to find the van side lights/rear lights were not working. The indicators and brake lights work fine. . The usual wiggle of the plug failed so we limped home with the warning light flashing and got pulled up by a very understanding police man about 200 yards from home. Now safely home I've connected the van to another vehicle and everything is fine. To double check I also connected another trailer lighting board to the tow car and that shows the same fault as the van. So clearly the fault is with the towcar.(I'm on the 'old' 7 pin system) If it was an earth problem surely the indicators and brake lights wouldn't work. But the left and right rear lights have seperate positive feeds so what could stop them both working as well as the van front small white lights.Could there be a fuse covering these lights but not the indicators/brake lights? Any Ideas?

Paul
 
How old is your car ?

Has the socket been on the car long ?

The very least you will have to do is take the socket apart & check the ends of the wire have not corroded.....

Failing that you will need to find how / where the pick up for the wires are in the back of the car & check those connections

I would put a new socket on if there is any corrosion in the rear & re-make every connection....
 
Hello Sproket,

Thanks for prompt reply

it's a Piccasso, 4 years old and the electrics were fitted a couple of years ago by towbar fitters. The contacts and connections all look as good as new but I'll check them all again.If there was a bad connection on a pin for example wouldn't it tend to affect one light it seems odd that they should all go at once. The fault seems to be common to everything except the brakes and indicators
 
You will have to find out where the wires are connected in the boot of your car, if it has just been scotch-locked they might just want a ***, if that works re-make that connection also..

Are you car rear lights ok ?
 
I had a similar problem some years ago and to save time the fitter had connected the van's left and right light feeds together and fed them from one side of the car wiring. This may be the case with your car and you only need this one connection to fail and all your van lights have gone. Good advice from sproket though.
 
Paul,

Before stripping anything down, ensure that the car side lightswitch is turned on. Then you should check for voltage between Pin 3 and 7 and Pin 3 and 5. If you don't have a meter then a bulb with two croc clipswill do.

Pin 3 Earth

PIn 5 Right Sidelight

Pin 7 Left Sidelight

If you have 12 volts then simply spreading the pins in the socket could be the solution.
 
Yippeeee sorted.

It was a dodgy badly made connection. As suggested the left and right side were joined so a fault on one side and you lose the lot. bad practise indeed. I guess this is how the 'pro' tow bar fitters do the job in half the time of a DIYer. Next time I'll do the job myself and it won't fail.

Thanks for all the help.

Paul.
 
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