NOTE! Last weekend, and the weekend before, I had all kinds of hell chasing down a problem with my running lights, including instruments, license plate light, brake and tail lights, and fog lights. Turn signals still worked. I thought it was the headlight switch, which certainly NEEDED to be replaced. Lights burned almost twice as bright after changing that, and system voltage gained a whole volt at night, even with the hi beams on. But this didn't solve the problem. I found a loose orange wire running toward my glove box. Tightened the spade connector. Coincidentally, the running lights came on then, and I thought, "Ahh, I HOPE this did it..." , and even mentioned this on the Forum. Then, a week later, when I slammed my brakes to avoid hitting a Millennial Mental Midget who zoomed in front of me, I loosened the key fault, which reared its ugly head that nightfall. So I again stood on my head under my steering wheel for another good 90 minutes, carefully testing This and That, poring over the FSM wiring diagrams, to no avail when......
SERENDIPITY!!!
I wiggled the FUSE BOX, which I had taken loose the better to test This and That thereby, ET FIAT LUX! et Lux facta ergo est!
I finally found a LOOSE BRASS RIVET in the original 1965-66 MoPar C-body fuse box which attached the orange line to the headlight switch. This rivet holds the male disconnect connector down to the fuse connector, and had loosened from circuit heat, tension and such over the 52 years it had been in use. Other connections not being much better, I decided to do as I had with my trusty old 1959 International Travellall, which had NO fuse box upon acquisition, and to replace this venerable original relic with a good new SFE glass fuse holder. I found an AIRTEX/WELLS 6G1042 which has a lovely brass bus, screw terminals which will accept either ring or spade terminations for 6 circuits. I also got a cheap Dorman with the same sort of slide disconnects Ma Par favored which I will likely deploy under the hood for some extra stuff now using inline fuses. All my fuses are SFE /AGCglass, as I prefer stuff designed by the Society of Fuse Engineers to cheap modern ATC blade fuses. I can even cut the brass bus bar on the NOS Airtek/Wells fuseblock I got to divide it 4 & 2 for the stuff on the battery and the ignition/Acc switch respectively. I'm converting ALL my instrumentation lights to 12V, which is easy enough since I pulled the old panel with the speedometer, fuel, oil pressure, water temp, and ammeter last year. I might wind up selling that, or eventually putting 12V LEDs in it if I care to ever put it back in.
Anyway, you might replace your fuse box if you can't find anything else wrong, but keep having problems with lights!
