midlife
Shorts checker
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2012
- Messages
- 4,468
- Reaction score
- 1,227
- Location
- Tucson, AZ
- My Car
- No Mustangs at the moment.
I've been deluged with 1971 harnesses this week: 3 of them!
Over the years, I've noticed a chronic problem with tail-light grounds on the lamp sockets, highlighted by today's work. Not only are the sockets usually corroded (which I clean up with a wire wheel and dremel for the insides), this particular tail had all of the passenger side grounds being too high. OK, so I replaced the OEM splice (1 wire in and 4 wires out) with my own splicing, but still no good grounds on the various sockets. Next step is to measure resistance at the spade leads: still too high. OK...next step is to remove the spade lead and measure again. If still not good enough, I mash the crimp down hard and measure again. Welll lo and behold, that works! So the spade lead goes back onto the socket and measure resistance from inside the socket, and all sockets read fine. Usually, it is the socket inside that is bad.
OK...here's the bottom line: From my experience, the usual (every tail I refurbish has at least one ground issue) problem for bad grounds is that the crimps on the socket ground leads are crappy, along with corrosion on both the male and female leads. The male leads are buried in the socket, so there's not much you can do there. My recommendation: mash those crimps down hard so that the crimp makes good contact with the wire strands. This should brighten up your tail-lights quite a bit. The policeman following you closely will thank you for your efforts!
Over the years, I've noticed a chronic problem with tail-light grounds on the lamp sockets, highlighted by today's work. Not only are the sockets usually corroded (which I clean up with a wire wheel and dremel for the insides), this particular tail had all of the passenger side grounds being too high. OK, so I replaced the OEM splice (1 wire in and 4 wires out) with my own splicing, but still no good grounds on the various sockets. Next step is to measure resistance at the spade leads: still too high. OK...next step is to remove the spade lead and measure again. If still not good enough, I mash the crimp down hard and measure again. Welll lo and behold, that works! So the spade lead goes back onto the socket and measure resistance from inside the socket, and all sockets read fine. Usually, it is the socket inside that is bad.
OK...here's the bottom line: From my experience, the usual (every tail I refurbish has at least one ground issue) problem for bad grounds is that the crimps on the socket ground leads are crappy, along with corrosion on both the male and female leads. The male leads are buried in the socket, so there's not much you can do there. My recommendation: mash those crimps down hard so that the crimp makes good contact with the wire strands. This should brighten up your tail-lights quite a bit. The policeman following you closely will thank you for your efforts!
