No sidelights or foglights

[behai]

Can anyone help.... I have a club joker 1989 just failed mot because no sidelights or foglights working. The light switch clicked into the sidelight position just gives main beam and no sidelight at all.. checked fuses all seem ok... anybody any ideas?

[CovKid]

Try the earth crown under your dash. Often the culprit.

[behai]

Thanks I will definitely give it a look, a few people have said the same will have a look tomorrow.

[CovKid]

You can delete your duplicate thread further down. Just click on it and you should see the delete option.

If its not the earth crown and you're still stuck, come back and we'll suggest something else.

[behai]

Ok cheers... thanks for your help

[Timwhy]

Try the earth crown under your dash. Often the culprit.

This is what I suspected when my headlight stopped working. I was on the road so could not properly inspect the ground crowns. I ended up grounding my headlights at the grill and didn't need to squeeze under the fuse panel to inspect. After I was at home I found much corrosion of the ground wires spade connectors and up inside the wires themselves. Since my Westy is parked outside for the winter, it will be a spring time fix of all the grounding wires at the crowns, with new crowns to boot. The wires are such a tight fit and many of them doubled up per spade. The two additional crowns and cutting out bad wire then lengthening them should make easier inspection for the future.

[syncroandy]

Permanent fix for iffy earth crowns. Really not hard to do once the relay plates been dropped out of the way.

Studs added after removing paint for proper conduction:



Painted to exclude moisture. Main front harness earth wires terminated with ring terminals.

[CovKid]

Nice touch with dome-cap nuts - saves your knuckles if you have to work under there. The earth crowns are notoriously troublesome, not helped I suppose with front screen rot which lets water in. The crown as well as the spades can get corroded and they can be awkward to get at as well as clean. An annual inspection/clean up is no bad thing but due to their position you've either got to be a contortionist in the cab or adopt the familiar "pray to thy front wheel" position to get at them.

[Timwhy]

I think that once mine are all cleaned I'll give the whole lot of them a few blasts of Liquid Tape or some Dielectric Grease

[syncroandy]

Nice touch with dome-cap nuts - saves your knuckles if you have to work under there. The earth crowns are notoriously troublesome, not helped I suppose with front screen rot which lets water in. The crown as well as the spades can get corroded and they can be awkward to get at as well as clean. An annual inspection/clean up is no bad thing but due to their position you've either got to be a contortionist in the cab or adopt the familiar "pray to thy front wheel" position to get at them.

I just followed what VW did from late-90's onward, the dome nuts are from Mk4 Golf or similar. After the simple earth crowns in the 80's cars, they moved to a more fancy (and costly) earth crown with snap-in JPT connectors in the 90's (CE2 cars). Then they abandoned that and went back to basics with the studs and ring terminals. I'm guessing with longterm experience they decided simplest was best. I think part of the corrosion problem with T3's is the amount of internal condensation on the bodywork when used as a camper.