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Posted by David Sherman [216.18.131.196] on Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 14:00:29 :
In Reply to: Re: No brake/tail or dash lights posted by Jerry in Idaho [64.139.238.43] on Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 10:13:54 :
The trouble with that theory is that there are two brake/tail light housings, each grounded separately, and both lights went out at the same time. The headlight switch and wiring are their own separate circuit usually with a breaker or fuse built into the light switch. Every time I've taken apart an old push/pull/twist type light switch, I'm amazed it works at all because of the dirty grease, worn plastic and copper parts, weak springs, and sloppy housing, but they usually do. A bad switch would account for the panel and tail lights being out, but the brake lights are on their own circuit, so if all of these things truly went out at the same time for the same reason, we have to look upstream to the point where those two circuits (one feeding the brake switch and one feeding the non-headlight parts of the regular light switch) are common. Not knowing the wiring of the particular truck, I don't know where that connection is. Could be on the fuse block, or via connected terminals on the light switch. So many things went out at once that I'm sure the problem is on the hot side of the circuit, not a bad ground.
Beyond that, I'd need to be poking around on it myself, hopefully with an accurate wiring diagram, but at least with a test light. That first part is important because once I see a wire-nut or a crimp splice, all bets are off. Every old truck I've ever bought had a mish-mash of mickey-moused wiring in which somebody tried to add something, broke something else, tried to fix it by bypassing some other thing, and so on until they were lucky if they could get power to the starter and the ignition and maybe have at least one working headlight.
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