Tail light update


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Posted by COAINY on Saturday, August 20, 2005 at 10:42PM :

Further down in the forum, I answered a question about the DODGE logo taillights available from Roberts Motor Parts.

It jogged my memory that I had two of them in the barnm waiting to be used to replace the non-standard rear lights on my '54.

So I went out to install them and guess what I found? The socket portion is a piece of crap. The springs that keep pressure on the contacts, the contact wafer board, and the end cap are all loose and there is no way to keep them in place to ensure contact with the bulb.

The two-filament bulb, as everyone knows, has two pins that act as keys to align the bulb in the socket. These two pins are offset, to match the offset female spaces in the socket. This scheme ensures that the dim filament is powered as a running light, and the bright filament is powered as the brake light. However, the socket in the Roberts fixture is the wrong one. It has the two pins equally spaced, as if the socket were intended for a single-filament bulb.

So the only way to get the proper bulb to fit is to grind off one of the pins, and hope that you get the bulb in the right way.

Of course, all this is moot, as the entire socket is so flimsy that only an hour's cussing and sweating got it to work at least marginally.

Does anyone make a GOOD repro, with the proper electrical and mechanical features? I wouldn't recommend the Roberts one to anyone, now that I have had the misfortune to work on one.

apb



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