wiring

[Bernie]

Please can someone tell me where the earth wire which goes to the rear lights comes from, back up the loom.

I checked all the lighting worked before I put the body on, but now I'm reconnecting everything when I turn on the sidelights I have 12 volts down the black wire as well as the live , and I can't easily now trace back to where I've screwed up. I just need to know what the run of that wire is, back from the offside rear cluster.

ta

bernie

[neil still building it]

hi bernie
sounds to me as though you've lost your EARTH big time....the power will then route through bulbs etc giving you a 'false live' if you try flashing an earth across these earth connections you should see a light or whatever come on...hopefully only a wire or connector 'tugged 'out when you shuffled it about with the body fitting exercise.try switching on an indicator or hazards and providing an earth via a long cable etc to confirm......
neil

[Almac]

Bernie,

I believe there are various iterations of loom in circulation so my experience may not hold true for yours. My loom has several earth ring connectors that need to be connected back to earth, usually chassis. These provide the earth to each section of the loom and are always black wires. The earth connection for the rear of the car is on the loom somewhere between the 2 rear light branches. It needs to be connected to the chassis.

If the lights were working, maybe you've knocked it off during the body fit. Did you actually test the lights by connecting across the earth and feed connections at the lights or did you use an alternative earth connection point?

Alan

[Bernie]

Yes, as you say, it looks like an earth has become not earthed, but what I can't work out is where the black wire goes on it's way to be attached to the chassis. I don't have the earth ring in the middle of the rear of the car, so I need to work my way back towards the front to find where I've gone wrong.

I suppose I could just earth the black wire somewhere else but given that I'd sorted all this some time back I wanted to find out what I've failed to do. Does anyone have a version of the loom not yet hidden which has the earth wire from the rear coming from the middle or front of the car?