Brake Light and Blinker Bulb Replacement

[dsnyder]

I have a blinker not working on the rear driver's side and a brake light not working on the passenger side. Are there any tricks to bulb replacement?

[mbouse]

instructions on access to the bulbs will be determined by the model year. with each change in the lens style, there was/is significant differences with the access to the bulbs.

what year is your car?

[dsnyder]

1978

[dsnyder]

1978

[mbouse]

there should be a knurled knob in the back of the housing on each end of the assembly. those two knurled knobs should be turned counter clockwise to release the lenses from the car. once the lenses are off, bulb replacement is self explanitory.

i have seen several cars where the knurled knobs went missing, and the guy that lost them replaced the knobs with some form of hex nut.

which ever way your car happens to be, you should have a threaded stud through the lens into the housing. stud goes all the way through the housing and secured to the back of the housing.

[dsnyder]

Perfect! Thank you.

-Dave

[manoa matt]

While you are in there you might as well clean up the adjacent light bulb sockets and give them a light coat of dielectric grease before reinstalling the bulbs. The tip of a pencil eraser works good to clean the small tab within the bulb socket, the grittier the eraser the better. The old ball point pen erasers are the best.

Carefull removing the lense retaining knobs. Not uncommon for that fastener system to experience moderate/severe corrosion. If one of the special bolts shears off or the knurled knob is stripped out, I have spares.

[dsnyder]

Blinker fixed... Brake Light still a mystery. I can unplug the wires going to the brake light and they will light the bulb. I put my multimeter on the socket ground and positive and I get 12 volts. Put the bulb in and it will not light. I've cleaned the contacts but still no light. The socket negative tests good to ground and will light the bulb if I supply it with 12v positive to the bulb. So... electrically the problem is between where the wire plugs into the socket on the positive side and the tab that touches the positive of the bulb.

Next step is to remove the bulb socket. What is the best way to do that?

Dave

[manoa matt]

You need to clean the contacts where the wires connect to the bulb holder, clean the bulb holder sides and small tab inside, and clean the bulb housing or change to a new bulb.

The metal bulb sockets are riveted into the plastic housing, you will have to drill them out and replace the rivets with tiny brass nuts and bolts. I have a few spare housings, If you find its the metal bulb holder is at fault, I can provide you with a replacement bulb holder.

[SpiderJim]

I had this problem. Turned out to be where the socket mounts to the circuit board via rivets. I ended up scraping the coating off the trace cleaning then soldering a connection between the two. One would think that it is conductive but sometimes impedance builds up and it goes dead. I ended up doing this to all my sockets and have not had a problem since.

[launieg]

My experience was that it was necessary to drill out the socket rivets. Considerable oxidation/corrosion beneath the sockets. Clean that up, brush out the insides of the sockets, re-rivet, and all was well again. Not difficult and well-worth the effort.

[Seajunkie]

My experience was that it was necessary to drill out the socket rivets. Considerable oxidation/corrosion beneath the sockets. Clean that up, brush out the insides of the sockets, re-rivet, and all was well again. Not difficult and well-worth the effort.

Thanks for the advice. I drilled out the rivet for the bulb. Cleaned it up and put in new rivets. It works great! On to the next thing.