Posted by Caleb in Manhattan KS [70.184.232.53] on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 14:01:47 :
In Reply to: Re: blue truck is on W300 chassis posted by Kaegi [76.22.23.236] on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 13:00:50 :
Every time I see an older Dodge parked with no one inside and not running or with the headlights left on....and there are the brake lights.
A friend of mine a few years ago kept having the battery on his '75 die. It was rarely used at or near dark so he never looked at the tail lights, which were always on. He had spent a considerable amount of time trying to chase down the "leak" including a new battery, regulator, and alternator. At one point, he even hooked up his ammeter and was comparing the draw to any number of options installed on the truck.
In the end, 5 minutes and $0 is all it took to fix. When he pulled into my shop (garage...I would never apply my mechanical "expertise" to the general public) to have me rebuild the carburetor, I noticed the brake lights were on. He immediately got a dumb/em-bare-assed look on his face and recounted the stories of a long fought struggle with electrical energy and this truck.
Checked the switch by swapping with another similar one...no bueno...so I started following wires under the dash, sure enough, where the wire for a something-or-other, not-used-anymore switch crossed a wire to the brake light, it had shorted to the dash support and melted onto the brake wire, hot enough to get the wire to touch. Somehow there was no other misfortune with this wire.
I patched up the wire with tape and a little piece of Romex insulation and drank a beer.