Alan:
The brake light symptom is unrelated to your battery drain
issue. The tail light symptom is caused by a poor ground, which TR6 tail
lights are notorious for.
The contacts in the sockets oxidize over time, and eventually
you lose a ground in one of the sockets. In your case the tail lamp has
lost it's ground, and is making a ground though one of the other bulbs.
When you depress the brake pedal, the alternate ground path goes away
and the lamp extinguishes. It also sounds like one of your lamps is bad
since the brake light never comes on.
I would urge you to check your oil switch connections anyway.
Just because you have not touched it does not mean it is correct. And
putting in a new alternator may have just revealed this problem since
your last alternator apparently had issues.
The oil switch is indeed on the side of the block, with three
wires. The terminals look like this:
1 | |3
--
2
1 = white/purple
2 = white/brown
3 = black(?)
My schematic does not show the color of the third wire, but from
memory it is black. In any event this will allow you to check and if
necessary correct the wiring.
Just remember, your car is over 30 years old. Poor grounds will
occasionally crop up.
Your starter problem sounds as though your seat belt interlock
may be preventing the starter from engaging, or perhaps a wiring issue
in the interlock loop. One thing to check is the Molex connector in the
wiring harness next to the fire wall under the clutch master cylinder.
Brake fluid, rust, etc get in there and disable the connection to
starter relay. Mine was very loose and sloppy and simply wiggling it
would disable the starter. In the end I removed it and soldered the
connections as the Molex serves no purpose.
The Molex connector is white, and is next to the main wiring harness as
it exits the fire wall into the engine compartment. The Molex connector
is about the size of a 50 cent piece.
Vance
________________________________
From: alan g graffam [mailto:otral@juno.com]
Sent: August 12, 2007 8:10 AM
To: Navarrette, Vance
Subject: Re: [6pack] Finding short
Hi Vance,
Thanks for the reply!
I don't think your suggestion fits my problem. I haven't messed with
that switch for years. That's the one on the side of the block with 3
leads, right?
Here's further info. re: my rear lights...
1. I checked out all leads at the connections and all seems good.
2. When I apply my brake the right side brake light works and the left
side doesn't; furthermore, I loose the left side running tail light to
boot.
3. After I let up on the brake pedal left side tail light returns.
My plan so far will be to disconnect neg. lead whenever I park the thing
and reconnect and look around for a electrical specialist who's not
afraid of British cars.
On another topic... I think my starter bendix got locked up yesterday.
Nothing when I turned the key. Rapped the starter a few
times...nothing, not a click. Went to bed thinking the worst. Got up
and the starter turned over! First time that's ever happened to that
particular starter.
Your turn if you have any words of comfort,
Alan Graffam
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