I just received back my 1969 Bird from the paint shop. Seems that my rear tail lights are not working. I have replaced the bulbs.
I noticed that on the drivers side FRONT that I have two wires connecting into one connector that was left hanging. I was thinking that the tail light operate when the headlights go on thus leading me to believe that this connector on the FRONT drivers side has something to do with the tail lights not operating. My rear tail lights are green wire. It is hard to tell if the Front wires are green or blue.
Does the Front headlight act as a relay to the back tail lights? If so is this connector to be attached to the back of the headlight unit and if so which one?
If not....anyone have any ideas?
I would also light to replace a couple of the rear buld housings, can these be purchased at my local PepBoys?
Im not sure, but does the tail light housing ground to the body? If so, since you just had the car painted it may not be getting the ground through the housing.
My bird tail lights (the plastic sockets) kept falling out, just like most...but my buddy wired in F*rd sockets (metal) and hard wired ea one grounded...dont fall out , as a matter of fact they are hard in there ,so hard that once you pull one out its hard to put back in....I like `em....even though F*rd parts....metal sockets dont warp or shrink ...and you cant tell what they are unless you really lean over with your head in the trunk...
I took a look in the book, and it lists with plastic and without plastic valance. I have never seen a plastic valance on a 9 so I don't have a clue. On my car, it has a ground wire on each side in the front of the core. Trace both sides of the harness in front and verify that you have them grounded, and it doesn't hurt to verify ground contact, instead of looking at and seeing the wire bolted to metal.
The tailights ground to the chassis through the metal retaing clips; as a result, the housing must provide ground to the chassis.
The lights are squirrely, at least, on the 9. If you have a wire crossed on the socket or one socket doesn't ground, the combinations of malfunctions are endless. The problem might be with the tailight ground, but let's take this one step at a time.
You wrote: I noticed that on the drivers side FRONT that I have two wires connecting into one connector that was left hanging.
What do you mean left hanging? Describe what's on the end of the wire. Is it a eyelet, something that looks as if a bolt runs through it? If so, it's a ground, and it needs to be married to the chassis.
Does it have a socket on the end? If so, the socket will only fit the correct component. In modern autmobiles, meaning in the last 50 or so years, there are no universal connections, so you cannot plug the wrong wire on the wrong component, and it there are similar connecters, they are so far from each other they cannot be hooked incorectly..
If the wires are stripped bare, check to make sure that the headlights, parking lights, marker lights, and horn are hooked up. If everything is hooked up and you cannot find a ground wire, they are probabally the ground wire. I'm not sure about the headlights because they are independant from the fuse box, so make sure that all headlight wires are attached. If it's not headlights you can ground this wire because all it will do is pop a fuse if they are hot. Also, if you use a basic process of elimination, you can be postive that they are ground wires.
Get that resolved, and if you still have problems, make a new post, and we'll go down the road with the tailights. I think that you can get sockets without a problem at the whistlebritches car parts places.
Pay attention to the wiring. If the sockets are wired properly to begin with, you can use them to ensure correct wiring. The esaiest way to replace sockets is to make note to the high post--the retaining stud--and the low post on the lightbulb. Make sure that the correct wire goes to the high post and the low post. If the wires aren't correct or you have bad ground from the posts, the tailights will do all kinds of strange things.
the front turn/marker lamp if bad will affect the rate of the flasher, but the rear should still work.
Since you had your ‘bird come back from body work, make sure your tail lamp housings were installed correctly. The housings provide the ground for the sockets. They’re held in by five studs & nuts. If you’re missing some, Ames has these as well. My conv was missin’ about half of them and was part of the problem of water in the trunk.
If your rear wiring harness looks anything like the one in my convertible did, replace it. I got a replacement harness through Ames, and it was worth every dollar. No more lamp problems at all.
This might be a silly question. Did you have your trunk coated when you had the car painted? If by chance you did, did you check to see where the wiring harness goes to the left side of the trunk fender weld? That is where you tail light wiring harness will plug into your center harness....did they put this plug back together? We were having problems with our brake lights on our '69 Bird which turned out to be our turn signal in the steering column. I tested with a light tester. I took a tail light socket out of the tail light and removed the bulb. Then I grounded the tester and used the tester in the socket to see if they had power and the brake light lit up without the socked being plugged into the tail light. As you notice the sockets are plastic that come with the car and I was able to get them to light up without them being plugged in. I believe that the grounding is internal in the wiring system because we had mechanics try to fix our brake light problem with a grounding system and we weren't getting any power to the lights because the light tester wouldn't light up. It turned out to be a power problem.
Classic birds all the way! Like Rock and Roll, they're here to stay!
You certainly did narrow it down. Makes it much easier guessing.... Now your problem is in the headlight/tailight circuit. This involves the headlight switch. Let us know if your headlights work.
The Headlight Do work. However, when I go to high beams only the High Beam Lights go on. I pulled the headlight bulbs and checked the connections. I DID find out in doing so that the loose double wire I mentioned earlier was the not connected to the Low Beam. I connected this wire and then BOTH Low and High beams went on ONly when I hit the high Beam button. Now, today for some reason I am back to just LOw or High. But lets not get away from the Tail light issue since I can not drive at night which is a problem.
My head lights do work, my instrument /Dash light has gone out, not sure if this is related. Could it be a Fuse???
Since I am going to be pulling the interior, would it be smart to install a new intermediate harness that feeds the trunk compartment?
There is no separating the head light issue from the tail lights because they could be related. The dash lights are married in with the tail lights also. You say you have intermittent headlight problems. Question; What do all these things have in common? Answer; The headlight switch.
I am believing that that may be the issue and since this is a fairly inexpensive part to replace....thats will be the next step. I'll keep all of you up to date on the progress.....Sure would be nice to drive it at night!
You ask could it be a fuse? It sure can if you haven't verified that the fuse is good. This and ground should be the very first steps in troubleshooting. One of the easiest ways to troubleshoot is to use a known good fuse in the block. How you determine it's good is up to you. Anything other than visual inspection is okay. Unless you start at the first step--known good fuses and known good grounds--you will end up wasting a lot of time going nowhere.
The no dash makes me tend to belive it isn't tailight-to-housing ground, but unless I verified known to be good ground, I still wouldn't rule out tailight ground on the housing because this can cause some of the most squirrely problems.
Also, you might not have the sockets connected correctly. On the tailights, maybe if I get a chance this weekend, I'll see if I can tell which color wire goes to the high tab and which one goes to the low tab. If you have one of more out of order, the combinations of failures exceeds the combinations of any state lottery.
It's never nice and neat, so you might have multiple issues. My thoughts on the headlight issue and the switch: The switch controls on and off and dash light fader, nothing more. It doesn't care--at least it seems that it doesn't care--whether or not the headlights are on high beam or low beam. The dimmer switch, however, cares a lot as to high or low beam operation. If you compare the failure rate of dimmer switch to headlight switch, you'll find that dimmer switches fail at least 100 to 1. The big cause of dimmer switch failure is that it happens to be in direct line with most firewall water leaks. It's just like a funnel, collecting all water entering on the left side of the firewall.
Garz, did you try your windshield wipers yet? Someone else was having problems the other day and asked me to check how mine was wired up. Turned out to be the ground behind the dash wasn't making a good connection. Mine still don't work but at least I think I know what it is when I get around to it. BTW. I'd like to roll by and take a look at it one of these days if you're going to be around.
I would welcome the visit. We were hoping to have the car at Sun Valley so we could have some of you take a look.
Yesterday I meet with the previous owner to have him sign off over the personalized plates and get the other Black Plate. I asked him if he was experiencing any issues which he said he was. He stated that he was told it was either a short or a switch.
I took a look at the fuse box....Hell...I'm afraid to try to pull anything out of it as it sure looks brittle and old. But we'll just have to be careful. Since I am going to be removing the entire interior this weekend I'll work on it when I get everything out...
Regarding the Headlight switch, do I need to order one from Classic or Ames or can I just get them at the local dealer/auto parts store?
i don't know if i can be much help but when my tail lights weren't working i cleaned every ground i could find,i took the turn signal switch,the ignition switch,dimmer switch,brake light switch,parking brake switch apart and cleaned all the old dust and grease out and lightly sanded the contacts.also did the neutral saftey switch and wiper switch.hardest one was the ignition switch, lots of small parts. a lot of the switches also must be grounded. i know how you feel been there,mine now work but i can't pinpoint what the problem was.
are you sure i thought someone on the py site said somthing about the power running up the steering coloum thru the turn signal switch then to tail light. tryed to find the post but could not find it. i'm not much good with eletrical issues but i would clean and check the turn signal switch.
http://forums.performanceyears.com/forums/showthread.php?t=486599 this is the link to my post on the py site when i had trouble. your turn signal switch could be cracked,or in my case needed cleaning,and i found two bent contacts behind the switch which i had to bend slightly to make cotact. not saying this is your problem but worth taking a look at.
Garz, Do you have a service manual with the full wiring diagrams? That would be where I would start by identifying all the wires that power or ground the taillights and where the come from/go to. Where they connect and what color they are. Then you can start at the power and, with a test light, start chasing it down. With the interior out it should be fairly easy. If you don't have the schematics let me know and I can send them to you or check Vikki's first gen site. I think she has alot of tech info there. Email me your address and number and I'll give you a call when I get a couple of hours, one of these days, and see if you're going to be around. A buddy told me they had the last SV show a couple of weeks ago.
Jim ,my turn signal switch wasn't cracked but after i cleaned the contacts and fixed the 2 contacts in behind it that were bent wy tail lights worked. the guy on the py site had a cracked turn switch and said his blinkers and tail lights would work one time and not the next. my lights worked when i got the car because i checked but didn't when i brought it in for a saftey check.
I was wondering because when I troubleshoot tail lights and the blinkers work good it's not the blinker switch. All we can do is take Garz at his word that his blinkers work good and use this info for what it is worth. If your blinkers worked good and you had a bad switch then we really can't use the blinkers working good as an indicator of a good switch. It's been a useful 'tool' over the years at excluding the switch when the blinkers work good. But if you are saying that we can't use this tool......
don't take my word for it i am by far no expert in electrical trouble shooting just giving my experience. for all the time it takes to take that switch out i would check it to cross it off the list.
Looks like I hit a nerve with all the great responses I have recieved from the Tail light post! I will be looking into evertything all of you have posted. We have also decided to gut the interior which we did yesterday. I thought that I MAY need to just go ahead a replace any harnesses that I can while doing the interior.
To bring you all up to date on the tail light this is what I have found out:
Passanger Front parking light is not working dues to the housing connector prong that attaches to the wired plug is broken. The round connector has broken INSIDE the wired connector. I will need to replace the parking light housing AND try to pig tail another connector. I know It would be best to replace the whole front light harness right? But is that a huge job? I do have all the interior out so that may be of some help. Since I replaced the rear trunk light harness now would be a good thime to replace the intermediate harness that runs from the dash to the trunk area..yes?
I also noticed when we pulled the rug that the high beam foot control botton connector is looking a little ragged. What do ya all think?
Also...take a look at the fllor pan...how bad is it? doesn't look to bad to us...maybe some POR15 now would be a good step?? Then run some speaker wire and replace the floor insulation...any feed back on insulation would be great.
What do I think about the high beam switch as the cause for the high/low beam issue? Didn't you read my post? Something about 100 to 1 failure rate,meaing that 100 high/low beam swicthes will fail for each headlight switch failure. Not saying that it never fails, but the headlight switch is pretty bullet proof. The failure with the headlight switch is usually the fader.
Typical of lots of troubleshooing, you now have a bezillion comments on the board. Throwing wiring harnesses at the problem isn't one of the better ways to go about it. After all, it won't cure a thing if it's a switch or a ground issue.
You can tackle it any way you wish. If I were doing it, I would fix the failed socket you mention. Next, I would install a new dimmer swtich--that's the switch in the second picture. That could/should solve the high low beam issue. Then I would revisit the wireing of the tailights, and ground issues. I know through my experaince, the tailight wiring and grounds can cause some funky stuff. Based on looking at the operation fgf tailights for the last 30 or so years, I have also noticed that having the wires and gound correct isn't a big concern, even on cars that have 6 $ digits in the cars.
Floor pans look good. No worries there. I agree with Merv. That dimmer swtch is the easiest thing to replace now, and way cheaper than any new wiring harness. You might get lucky. Just because wires are old doesn't mean they are bad.
Did you find the build sheet under the back seat carpet or tucked into any of the seat springs?
...and you cant tell what they are unless you really lean over with your head in the trunk...
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