1956 - Tail lights not working, headlights work

[AWSUM67GTO]

Bought my car in July of this year. Seller sent me a video of the car before purchase. As the videographer walked around the car, the lights were illuminated. On the rear, the tail lights/brake lights/turn signals all worked. On the front, the headlights (hi and lo beam) worked. The right parking light/turn signal worked. Left parking light and turn signal were inoperable. Figured that would be a little project that I could fix. The car was delivered at night and the first thing I noticed as the car was being unloaded was that no lights worked except the headlights. I am not an electrical kind of guy, but can anyone give me insight as to what is going on? Maybe some suggestions on where to start? It seemed odd to me that the lights all went out at one time.

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[biddle]

Your title "1956 - Lights on my car do not work." has been revised to summarize what your post is about.

 

[Rust]

Make sure the bulbs are working, and make sure all the grounds are grounded, Sometimes a good ground kinda stops being a good ground. Unscrew the ground(s), wire brush the area, re-attach the ground wire. about this time you will be in a club and have all the help you need. Hope this helps.

 

[Tom Alpers]

Bought my car in July of this year. Seller sent me a video of the car before purchase. As the videographer walked around the car, the lights were illuminated. On the rear, the tail lights/brake lights/turn signals all worked. On the front, the headlights (hi and lo beam) worked. The right parking light/turn signal worked. Left parking light and turn signal were inoperable. Figured that would be a little project that I could fix. The car was delivered at night and the first thing I noticed as the car was being unloaded was that no lights worked except the headlights. I am not an electrical kind of guy, but can anyone give me insight as to what is going on? Maybe some suggestions on where to start? It seemed odd to me that the lights all went out at one time.

The parking lights are on a completely different circuit than the brake lights. Just taking a quick look at the wiring diagram the one thing that those two circuits have in common is they're both powered from the headlight switch. So the first thing I would do to try to troubleshoot this is work the headlight switch on and off on and off on and off several times and see if the parking lights start to work some of the time. Same for the brakes - as you work the headlight switch conceivably if that's the problem the brake lights/turn signals might start to work at least part of the time. If that does make them work or at least flicker, the problem is probably the headlight switch. If that's what you find, the switch isn't too hard to remove and let dangle, with wires attached, a bit below the dash. DISCONNECT the battery first. If you can get it down there, put plenty of towels down and spray it good with contact cleaner or even WD40 while working the switch on and off and maybe the contacts will clean off and work.

 

[Pink T-Bird]

Electrical gremlins can be perplexing...

Have you asked the seller if he has any ideas? Sometimes they may know of something they had fixed once that may have happened again.

How about the backup lights? Do those work? If so, that says the taillight grounds are good. One less thing to worry about. However - the backup light switch is only powered when the lights are on if the car is still wired as stock. (I moved mine to feed from a wire that is powered whenever the car is running so the backup lights work during the daytime)

While as Tom notes your issues do share the light switch in common. However, they are on two different internal circuit breakers. The brake light circuit should be always powered regardless of light switch position. Does the courtesy light (over the radio) work? It is on yet another internal circuit of the light switch, a 7.5 A fuse, and always powered like the brake switch. If all three do not work, it seems like a low probability event that two breakers and a fuse would all fail at once?

You may well end up having to remove the light switch to further your trouble shooting, but just to see if it is the light switch check for power at the brake light switch. It is located on the brake line under the battery. One of the two green leads should always have 12V. If it does, place a jumper between the two leads and the brake lights should come on. If they do not that would point to either a bad turn signal switch, bad ground (see backup light question), or broken wire. If there is no power at the brake light switch you can run a jumper wire from the battery positive terminal to the brake light lead and see if you can get the brake lights to light.

 

[steve bashe]

I had a similar issue my turn signals worked but brake lights did not. See video

 

[doug7740]

Bought my car in July of this year. Seller sent me a video of the car before purchase. As the videographer walked around the car, the lights were illuminated. On the rear, the taillights/brake lights/turn signals all worked. On the front, the headlights (hi and lo beam) worked. The right parking light/turn signal worked. Left parking light and turn signal were inoperable. Figured that would be a little project that I could fix. The car was delivered at night and the first thing I noticed as the car was being unloaded was that no lights worked except the headlights. I am not an electrical kind of guy, but can anyone give me insight as to what is going on? Maybe some suggestions on where to start? It seemed odd to me that the lights all went out at one time.

Look at the attached wiring diagram and you will see that the yellow wire from the starter relay is supplying constant 12 volts to terminal B of the headlight switch. The headlight switch has two internal circuit breakers and one external fuse for the interior lights. Since you said that in the video from the seller all the lights were working and when the car was delivered only the headlights were working, I would start by looking at the headlight switch.

doug7740
1955 Thunderbird Blue