interesting short on rear side marker light

[Budduncan]

Hello all
After blowing F8 (could have been f7 since I no longer have my schematics in front of me) anytime I turned the instrument lights on with the dash switch i started chasing out an evident short. The right and left side rear lights are independently fused with the hot side of F7 and F8 tied together with power coming from the dash headlight switch. I finally determined that my short was in the truck area and suspected it was the license plate lamp wiring, probably where it went through the trunk body. It was not. It turned out to be the rear side lamp. The wiring is covered by a rubber boot. Upon removing the fixure from the body and pulling back the boot, there are two wires on spade terminal..a hot wire and ground. Who ever last put these on (and it was not me) rotate the uninsulated spade connectors so they just could touch each other. By turning them both 180 degrees sufficient clearance is maintained between the two of them and everything now works correctly, including my truck light. I did find a ground lug that was against paint, so I used my dremel tool to grind the paint away and secure a good ground. My car is a 71 and a lot of the ground points need cleaning. Even the little instrument reostat on the dash is working correctly. First time in a long time that all electrical is up and running. I am getting better at this.
Cheers,
Bud

[manoa matt]

Good to hear Bud, you'll find that most electrical problems on these cars can be traced back to bad grounds. It's also a wonderful feeling when all the electricals are working properly. Those spade terminals originally had a white plastic shroud over them.