urgent advice needed on lost tail/sidelight

[tim]

Heading off for Dorset tomorrow a.m. and I just noticed that the wife's trusty BX19 TDX has lost both the r.h. taillight AND the sidelight. Everything else works fine except those two. Stuff the sidelight but we could rather use a tail this time of year. There is obviously a common feed to both which splits off somewhere after it leaves the column switch but can you electrics experts point me as to where I should actually look?? I have about two hours tomorrow a.m. and without narrowing it down a bit I ain't going to find it in that short time.
I haven't checked the fuses cos it's dark but the book shows more than one fuse involved, and both sidelamps on one of them, so I suspect they are not the culprit. Let's hope that the 'right' people are looking at the forum tonight! Failing that all advice welcome for when we get back. Like I said, EVERYTHING works fine except for this one circuit, r.h. tail light and rh sidelight.

[Way2go]

Sounds like the bulbs!

If one tail light works then so should the other as the wiring is looped through at the rear. If not the rear bulb, check the earthing tags on the studs by each cluster.

[electrokid]

Hi Tim, the split is front and rear - if the NS tail light is working then the feed to the rear is ok.

The feed to the rear lights goes to the NS cluster first and then there's a link cable across to the OS. Check the plug connectors to the NS cluster.

The 2 lights you have out are 2 separate faults - just a likely to be the bulbs or dirt on the bulb contacts or the contacts losing their springiness a bit.

[citronut]

what time were you heading off to Dorset, and were in East Sussex are you as my workshop is in St Leonards on sea, but tommorow i wont be there till around 10.30am,

the main rear lighting feed comes up the N/S=left of the car then there is a link loom running across to the O/S=right,

regards malcolm

[Defender110]

It's usually a fuse when the one front side and one tail light go out! The side tail lights are on 2 seperate fuses so you dont loose both backs or both fronts at the same time.

[tim]

Thanks guys - I did think at first that it might be corrosion as my own BX as featured on many postings recently had no lights at all, and taking apart the tail lights and cleaning up the earth contacts worked well. But I cleaned up every contact I could find on this one, also there is no power through to the rh tail light terminal so there's definitely summat gone wrong. I'll check the lh side links tomorrow, lack of daylight stopped play. I also did wonder whether the column switch when operated supplied power through two separate feeds to left and right lights, and therefore might have gone wrong there. Sounds like not. Coincidences DO happen and I can't say for sure how long the front sidelight has been stuffed.... I know how the link from left to right works, but factoring in the front sidelight may have been a mistake. Also the brake light is fine. Tomorrow I'll check the front sidelight first then the rear link - you won't hear the result till Monday as we have to hit the road.

[citronut]

the front side lights quite offten suffer with coroded terminals in the bulb holder,

regards malcolm

[electrokid]

Coincidences DO happen

At the previous house I popped into the garage one evening and flicked the lightswitch - nothing - nada. Went into the outhouse with a meter to check fuses etc and traced the circuit... to find everything was ok. The 2 bulbs in the garage had been there and working ok for years and were fine the previous evening - both went west at the same time - and I instantly came to the wrong conclusion.

but factoring in the front sidelight may have been a mistake.

The easiest one to make - as an electronics engineer for some 47 years it took me about 30 years to realise (and some engineers never do !) that when you have a piece of kit in front of you and it has 2 or more faults it's a complete waste of time to sit there trying to work out what single fault could cause all the symptoms - 3 symptoms can just as easily have 3 causes.

When you have multiple symptoms the best course of action is to pick just one and investigate it in as logical a fashion as you can - and importantly when you've found the cause then fix it straight away.

Of course sometimes when you do that the other symptoms will go away if it turns out that one problem caused all the symptoms - in which case you saved all the time you would have spent sitting and thinking about it - it's fixed - go down the pub.

If it hasn't fixed all the symptoms just pick another one and work on that. It's quicker and more effective than trying to decifer any complex stuff going on.

Give my regards to Dorset - if the pub at Lytchett Matravers is still doing their home made wine watch out for the blackcurrent - last time I had some of that it unscrewed the bolts in my neck

[Vanny]

smells like a damaged link cable to me, changed the spare tyre recently?

[citronut]

as Brian says keep it simple because it more offten than not is,

this is why it is better to run a BX opposed to a XANT (says he running XANT

regards malcolm

regards malcolm

[rayfenwick]

(XM owner shuffles feet....)

[tim]

Thanks for the useful advice - with only an hour of daylight left I chose the scattergun approach, i.e. post up a panic message. After that I thought a lot and investigated the next morning. I had made a wrong assumption in that the front and the back were linked but I should have known better. Dead right Malcolm, the front sidelight had died on its own without any help, and was also beyond fixing. On the back, obviously that was where I focussed and I did in fact try changing a bulb first! But nothing, and using a light pencil demonstrated that there really was no power into the rh cluster, nor going in come to that. We ran out of time and somewhere between East Sussex and Sturminster Newton the light decided it was bored and kicked in again. So if it ain't broke I can't fix it. What I think is the problem is the internal link in the LH unit; if the problem recurs Andy has a box of spares but it has held up for 200 miles OK, probably being kicked around helped things. I dropped into a useful guy and got half a dozen spare sidelights while I was down there, but can anyone suggest ,for those who haven't got a friendly breaker, where the sidelights can be had new? Advice to anyone, dismantle yours now, clean it and give a shot of something protective inside.

[citronut]

let the force be with you,

i have in the passed used dersh (2CV front side light holders to replace BX fronts,

regards malcolm