It’s Smart (and SAFE) to Read the Directions

Or in this case, the shop manual. Tom (my owner’s dad) didn’t really want me to publish this account of his stupidity, but he relented when I explained how it might stop others from making the same potentially dangerous mistake.

About 2 weeks ago, Ariel told her dad that I had lost my dash and dome lights. Tom immediately assumed it was a problem with the 47-year-old headlight switch and he performed the same fix he’d done on his own ’63 Corvair – he spliced a wire into a wire of the dash light circuit and ran the other end to a switched 12V tab on the fuse block. Bingo, instant dash lights. However, every time the key is turned ON, so are the dash lights. Dash lights all the time are better than none of the time.

What they didn’t realize is that by powering the dash lights the way he did, he screwed up my tail light circuit. When the key was on, so were the tail lights, but as soon as the headlight switch was pulled, the tail lights went out. Not good unless you’re trying to run from the cops which Ariel would never do. So Ariel was driving around at night without tail lights. Fortunately, a Good Samaritan pulled up next to her Saturday night and informed her of the issue.

This time Tom pulled out the shop manual, reviewed the wiring diagrams, and discovered that there’s a separate 12V line coming into the headlight switch that powers the tail, dome, and dash lights. He tested the switch and found that lo-and-behold it worked perfectly. He confirmed the orange wires were in fact not powered, so he moved the splice from the dash light wire to the orange wire and moved the other end’s connector from a switched contact on the fuse block to an un-switched one. All the lighting works perfectly now.

While he had me in the garage, he pulled my air cleaner assembly and found the expected puddle (about a tablespoon) of oil in the bottom of the right-hand air filter housing. He knew the blow-by hadn’t magically gone away, and we’ll live with a quart of oil every three weeks. Next he pulled my six spark plugs and found the right-hand side’s three were oil-fouled. After a thorough cleaning on the wire wheel and checking gaps, the plugs were re-installed and everything else put back in place. I started right up and idled nicely before being backed out into the driveway and put back into service.