Dancing rear O/S lights - suspect earth issue

[Suffolk Defender]

Hi all,

Happy Friday!

When i have my lights on my defender 110(e reg) and turn on the left indicator, my rear lights on that side do a nice disco pattern.

Although i like a dance i figure id best sort this out. That and it appears to be linked to a bad starting issue that has arrived at the same time. 

I had the battery checked and its tested ok so i am guessing an earth issue.

I removed the cover off the back of the offending light area and found a bunch of earth wires going into, what looms like a connector block. As with anything on this old beast, the are, wires etc look a bif aged.

I squeezed the connector block a bit and found the disco effect stopped.

Am i safe to disconenct this lot and reconnect in a new connector block? if  so whats AMPs am i looking to cover here?

 

[MR-HIPPO]

If you want to keep it fairly original, I bought some of these the last time I played with the wiring behind the rear lights.

 

Edited August 9, 2019 by MR-HIPPO

[western]

'dancing' rear lights is a poor or missing earth connection to the body, 

just remove the big grey bullet connector, fit new end terminals & new 4 or 6 way common connector & clean up the body earth point in the left rear corner. you don't need to worry about amp rating

[Suffolk Defender]

 

On 8/9/2019 at 5:35 PM, western said:

'dancing' rear lights is a poor or missing earth connection to the body, 

just remove the big grey bullet connector, fit new end terminals & new 4 or 6 way common connector & clean up the body earth point in the left rear corner. you don't need to worry about amp rating

Thanks, when you say common connector, i am not familiar with 4 and 6 way connectors. Do you mean these:

On 8/9/2019 at 3:40 PM, MR-HIPPO said:

If you want to keep it fairly original, I bought some of these the last time I played with the wiring behind the rear lights.

 

 

[steve b]

Yes - common connector means all the sockets inside are connected to each other so provide multiple positions for one supply or earth in this case .

When I built my loom for my 109 I included earth returns for everything back to a common point on the bulkhead and then to the main battery to body earth point . I'm sure that's why I've only had a couple of bulbs fail in 14yrs and 130k miles

cheers

Steve b

[Suffolk Defender]

12 minutes ago, steve b said:

Yes - common connector means all the sockets inside are connected to each other so provide multiple positions for one supply or earth in this case .

When I built my loom for my 109 I included earth returns for everything back to a common point on the bulkhead and then to the main battery to body earth point . I'm sure that's why I've only had a couple of bulbs fail in 14yrs and 130k miles

cheers

Steve b

Thank you.

So is that how earthing works? we run earth to the bulk heads and then somewhere the bulk head is earthed on the negative on the battery? Its not something i have grasped tbh/.

Thanks

 

[steve b]

Yes , the earth connections provide the completion of whatever circuit is active .

The drawback with the standard LR system is the earth points are localised to where the system items are - in the case of your rear lights it is a screw through the aluminium of the wheel box and as such relies on a good connection through the steel screw into aluminium and then good electrical connection between the body work and the chassis and bulkhead  -  each bolted section or joint is another potential bad electrical joint and the older the LR the more likely a bad connection - hence my reasoning to run an earth wire connected to each local earth point and then back to the common earth point which on yours is by the clutch pedal box on the upper footwell  under the bonnet .

The main Battery earth is direct to the back of the transfer box and there should be another between the starter mounting bolt and the chassis . Another added from the bulkhead common earth to the engine somewhere nearby is worth the effort , it doesn't need to be particularly heavy gauge .

cheers

Steve b

[MR-HIPPO]

 

1 hour ago, Suffolk Defender said:

Thank you.

So is that how earthing works? we run earth to the bulk heads and then somewhere the bulk head is earthed on the negative on the battery? Its not something i have grasped tbh/.

Thanks

 

Yes everything is connected back to the battery -ve.

On older Land Rovers this was done by just connecting the earth wires from various circuits to metal body sections.

The battery is always connected to the vehicle chassis / engine / gerabox, and the lights would earth by finding a path back to the battery -ve through the various joints between panels, and chassis mounting points.  30 years on, once a little corrosion has got in here and there, these "paths to earth" are not as great as they once were.

Later Defenders (I think from around 300TDI) have earth return wires included in the loom to take everything back to the Bulkhead / Enging / Gerabox and on to the battery, thus eliminating the need to rely on a good electrical connection between the various body sections.

 

If you replace ( as Western said) the big grey plug, and the bullet ends on the cables joining it, and also remove the wire that bolts to the top of the seatbox, and give the ring end, and the top of the seatbox directly around the hole, a good clean (using wet and dry paper / emery cloth or similar), then your problem should go away.

However you are still relying on several other joints between body sections before the circuit actually gets back to the -ve side of the battery.

 

A more bulletproof fix, as per Suffolk Defender's post above would be to take a new wire back from the replaced grey block, directly to the battery -ve. If you do this, you had just as well also run the new wire over to the same block on the rear lights on the other side of the vehicle, this should pretty much put an end to earthing issues with all of the rear end lighting on your truck.

 

The connectors linked / pictured above, are the correct ones for the job, the picture shows a GREY 6 way, a Black 4 way & a Black 2 way. The numbers are simply the number of wires that can be plugged into each block.

 

I hope that has made things a little clearer.

 

EDIT: Steve b beat me to it.

 

Edited August 14, 2019 by MR-HIPPO