Tail lights and turn signals

[Lin]

Earlier in my restoration I thought I had sorted this problem out, but tonight it has come back to haunt me again. I have just installed my newly painted rear shroud and I was installing and hooking up the tail lights. By the way, getting those chrome trim rings to fit inside the rubber housing was a real pain!

Here is the situation: All components are new( flasher canister, relay (electronic variety, not the original coils), lights and bulbs). If lights are off and turn signal is activated, both left and right tail lights operate perfectly. If I turn the driving lights on, the turn signal in both lights is barely perceptible. I have carefully checked my ground connections throughout the car, and removed fresh paint where ground connections are to be made, but it doesn't seem to have affected this issue. If a faulty ground was the problem wouldn't the flashing signals have failed when the running lights were off also?

I would appreciate any suggestions that I might try to solve this problem.

Thanks.

Lin
1960 BT7 in restoration
1959 Bugeye

 

[GregW]

Hi Lin,
You've probaly thought of this but I'll ask anyway. Have you tried switching the hot wires at the bulbs? Red with white/whatever.

 

[anthony7777]

lin, if all is as you say then how fresh is your battery? if its not fully charged the heatlights could concievably be pulling a lot of free flowing electrons to themselves and starving the rest of the system /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/savewave.gif

 

[Ed_K]

Hi Lin,
You've probaly thought of this but I'll ask anyway. Have you tried switching the hot wires at the bulbs? Red with white/whatever.

/bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/iagree.gif
If the turn signal/brake wire and running light wires were swapped on both light assemblies, then it would act as you have described.
To confirm, Do you get the same result if you activate the brake lights instead of the turn signals ? If yes, then the wires are swapped.
While on this subject, it is important to get a good ground onto the body under the tail lamp assembly ground pigtail by scraping off some paint around the stud and using a star washer between the body and the lug on the ground pigtail. It won't ground worth a darn through all of that nice paint and primer that was just sprayed on !
Ed

 

[Lin]

The forum comes through again! Special thanks to Greg, Anthony and Ed for their responses to my questions. Turns out the ground was fine. I had the wires to the terminals backwards. I didn't realize that there was a right and wrong way to connect the wires in this case, but now I know! They are now glowing beautifully. Thanks guys, another happy ending.

Cheers.
Lin
1960 BT7 in restoration
1959 Bugeye