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New Bus Owner - Broken Reverse Light Wire at Transmission
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NFLFan92
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Joined: August 03, 2025
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Location: Prince Edward Island
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2025 5:29 pm    Post subject: New Bus Owner - Broken Reverse Light Wire at Transmission Reply with quote

Hello everyone, just bought my first VW Bus, a 1973. Yay me!!
I need to get the reverse lights working for a safety inspection and running into an issue. I following the wiring diagram in the Bentley manual, I traced the wire from the ignition coil to the fuse (which is good to the switch in the front of the transmission. The wire from the ignition coil is connected to the driver side of the switch and off the passenger side is a wire about 6 inches long that is broken. I'm assuming that's the problem with the lights (bulbs and housing are all checked and contacted cleaned of corrosion) That broken wire should connect back to the bottom left bulb in the rear light? Am I reading the electrical charts correctly? Thanks in advance for the help and advice!
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SGKent Premium Member
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2025 5:35 pm    Post subject: Re: New Bus Owner - Broken Reverse Light Wire at Transmission Reply with quote

follow the wires from the bulbs back to where they were supposed to tie to the switch. I can't crawl under my bus right now to see how they go. Maybe someone else can verify how theirs is wired.

F4 is the switch and S13 is the backup fuse

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busdaddy
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2025 5:42 pm    Post subject: Re: New Bus Owner - Broken Reverse Light Wire at Transmission Reply with quote

Welcome!
There's not much to that circuit, your assumptions are correct, power from coil #15 to the fuse, fuse to switch (doesn't matter which terminal) and the other terminal to the tail lights. The 73 may have a second switch on the nose of the transmission, it once controlled the vacuum advance for smog purposes, if one doesn't turn on the backup lights the other one will.

Here's the 72 diagram, same wiring, different depiction style (click on it twice to make it big):

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NFLFan92
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2025 6:39 pm    Post subject: Re: New Bus Owner - Broken Reverse Light Wire at Transmission Reply with quote

Thanks for the clarification!!!
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