At 11:50 PM 8/19/98 EDT, BobMGT@aol.com wrote:
>My license plate lights have never worked since I bought my B. Today I did
a little troubleshooting and discovered that the bumper was not grounded.
This astonished me, as the bumper feels good and solid. I tried tightening
a few of the bolts but they were already good and tight. I finally gave up
and used a wire to connect the bumper to ground. Anyone care to speculate
how the bumper could be bolted to the body without making electrical
contact? (Actually my meter said there was about a hundred ohms, but this
was not low enough to light up the bulbs.)
In the beginning, paint. Later on, rust and dirt.
I got a kick out of this, because I recently had a similar experience with
my MGA. I won't say it was a problem, becaust the license plate light
actually worked for many years. I was recently repairing a few wires
(broken by someone else), and when I thought I was finished, the license
lamp no longer worked. Then I discovered that I had connected both wires
to the hot tail light circuit, and the tail lights still worked.
As it turned out, the two wires (power and ground) were switched inside of
the license lamp housing, with the power wire connected to the housing.
The bumper was grounded, but fortunately the lamp housing was not grounded
to the license plate mount. How I ever got through 12 years and 125,000
miles without ever shorting the lamp housing to ground I'll never know. I
did get the wiring corrected so the lamp works, but I think the housing is
still not grounded.
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
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