Quote:
Originally Posted by KJinDC
It's difficult for me to explain since I'm so non-technical. Here's my attempt though.
The tail light assembly contains 5 bulbs. There's one small bulb that on the outside edge for the running lights, one yellow bulb for turn signal, and three additional bulbs for the brake light, reverse light, and additional running lights i assume. Two of those three bulbs are 1156s meaning they have a single contact point at their base through which they are powered. The bulb furthest to the inside is an 1157 which has 2 contact points. One of the two contact points in the assembly, not the bulb, had broken off and was trapped in the housing the bulb screws into. On the track, this tiny piece of metal would fly around and contact something within the housing thereby shorting the line. On the street the flake of metal would mostly lay dormant in he housing since it wasn't really exposed to the braking or lateral Gs we see on the track.
I only found this piece as I replacing the bulbs (again) so that I would be sure to have new bulbs when I took the car to the dealer to trace the electrical issue. Does that make sense?
Tony, I realized I forgot to thank you, Dr. K, John Sullivan and Joe Lagoia for helping chase this bizarre issue down over the course of the weekend. I'm glad it's resolved (cheaply)!
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Nice find!
People underestimate the trouble that bulb sockets can cause. Long ago in my 240Z, I had a sorta similar fuse blowing issue affecting the parking lights, particularly after a rain. I finally took a good look inside the sockets, and discovered in some corrosion between the contact points in one of the front fender parking lights. I cleaned it up, and all was good. Apparently, the corrosion would absorb moisture when it rained, and become conductive, shorting the circuit. I've also seen an issue where the wrong bulb was inserted into a socket; IIRC a 2-pin bulb instead of a 1-pin. Somehow, the pins not being dead center were contacting metal in the socket, causing an annoying short.