Taillight Issue

[Das67bus]

To the electrical gurus out there.

I have a '67 Panel Van. When I turn on the lights, the taillights do not come on. If I turn the lights off and then on again, the taillights come on.

Any ideas why it would do this?

Thank you VERY much in advance!
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SLOW RIDE........TAKE IT EASY!!!
-Foghat

COMFORTABLY NUMB!!
-Pink Floyd

[70bus]

Disconnect battery
remove light switch
clean light switch internals
install light switch
connect battery
pull switch once
hopefully all good!

if not
buy new light switch
(actually you can often rebuild them; details in tech section)
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Craig K
70 Neunsitzer
65 Pritschenwagen
"If Von Dutch was alive, he'd walk in there with a pistol and shoot these people." - Robert Williams

Raoul the 65 singlecab

Karl the 70 nine-seater

[Eric&Barb]

[@Buswerx]

I would check grounds. A bad ground could make the lighting intermittent.

[Bobs67vwagen]

On the early buses I owned in the past I would run separate ground wires from each t/l housing to the body, to be assured that I had a good ground on each.

[Das67bus]

[Das67bus]

[Das67bus]

[Eric&Barb]

[BarryL]

[Das67bus]

[Das67bus]

[Eric&Barb]

[BonTonRoulet]

The original VW taillight housings had a small raised pointed nub cast into them near either the upper or lower mounting machine screw for the lense to pull the assembly tight to the body to make the ground. It never did work well.

60 years later I like to create my own ground wiring loom for both taillights and the license plate light in one installable piece that turns out nice and functions like it should.

Start out with a length of trying to think it's 16 or 17 gauge copper wire preferably coated in brown or black as a proper ground wire would be, and start by soldering a large ring terminal on the end of your wire. I despise crimp on connector stuff so let's avoid that future hassle and build this on the work bench. No you'll need your new main ground wire we shall call it to be able to be mounted via the ring terminal to the bolt holding the battery main ground wire to the triangular gussett plate at engine hatch. So let's just fit it all together here.....put the ring terminal where it needs to go at the bolt come towards the rear of the bus with the wire then slip the wire between the chassis of the bus and the engine lid rubber seal, let's move up towards the corner of the engine lid and make a mark on the wire where we want to branch off with a stub ground wire a few inches to a small ring terminal we'll take a #2 sheet metal screw and zip it into the back of the tailight housing a; then continue our main ground wire under the seal across the top of the engine compartment where near the center we'll make another short stub to ground the license plate light, we'll continue our main across and down to the other tailight assembly for our final small ring terminal we'll zip into the back of the tailight with a #2 sheet metal screw to finish the job.

We'll build it all up with solder and heat shrink tubing at the connections and it all hides behind the engine lid seal and should be trouble free for the next 60 years. Much better than VW did originally!

You'll be proud of your work and have a good reliable ground wire set up on probably the most important part of your vintage bus to make reliable as we just recently lost one of our traveling companions to a horrific rear end night time crash.

Good Luck!
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Never argue with an Idiot. They'll only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

[Das67bus]

[Eric&Barb]

[crofty]

Can you adjust the brightness of the dash lights?
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Your Vanagon sucks, Stop waving at me.