Outer Limits 4x4 Board

on a 40, dash lights, park lights and tail lights are on the one circuit.

3 months ago, i started blowing fuses on this circuit.

i traced it back to a faulty switch (partially melted). so i replaced the switch with a new one (figuring it was probably 28 years of wear)

now the second switch (the new one) has partially melted.

where do i start?

Carefully!

Bloke at work recently started having trouble with his brake light switch in his EL (?) Falcon - the contacts would weld shut!

Yesterday, driving at 80km/h, smoke started billowing from under the dash, and hot melted plastic dripped onto his legs. Seconds later the car was an inferno, and is now a write-off.

Heat in a switch can be from poor contact pressure - vibration causes intermittent opening of the contacts, just enough to cause arcing without causing the lights to actually fail. The arcing creates enough heat to melt plastic - which happened to me with a dodgy contact in a connector in my headlight wiring just recently.

Use a new switch (not secondhand) and ensure all plugs and sockets have good contact too.

Cheers,

Scott

hey almost the exact same thing happened to me in an xd (same as teh el)

finally had a good look, the burning wasn't the switch, but the wires leading to it, turns out the previous owner decided masking tape was an acceptable way to wire up headlights.

so after a bit of careful rewiring, it looks to be good.

thanks anyway,

bad_religion_au wrote:hey almost the exact same thing happened to me in an xd (same as teh el)

finally had a good look, the burning wasn't the switch, but the wires leading to it, turns out the previous owner decided masking tape was an acceptable way to wire up headlights.

so after a bit of careful rewiring, it looks to be good.

thanks anyway,

Was the masking tape used to cover some sort of connection or just used to hold the loom together? If it was just holding the wires together like loom tape, there might be a more worrying cause to this problem!

assuming you havent added extra spotlights lately check your park light wiring where your wiring goes into your guard mounted front park / indicators IE common prob ... front tyres flick up rocks damaging wires.
if that looks alright then do a visual over all engine bay wiring look for places where wiring loom has worn away the paint ....... happened to me too mine was an intermittant fault offroad vibration / kerb jumping would cause exposed copper to touch the guard where the wires came out of the base of the front park / indicator

blackhj wrote:
Was the masking tape used to cover some sort of connection or just used to hold the loom together? If it was just holding the wires together like loom tape, there might be a more worrying cause to this problem!

the switch has been moved from the right hand side of the driver to the center dash, and the previous owner when doing this decided to rewire it, to just masking tape the wires to some spare wire lying around, no connection barring the two wires being held together with masking tape.

jeez i'm suprised it's lasted over the 3 years that i've owned teh truck for

VERY LUCKY ........ BUY LOTTO TICKET

Not many things just happen! There is usually a mysterious someone or something at fault. The trick is finding them, good luck with your newly wired up and hopefully faultless lights.