Thread: I hate modern electrics!

Car is a Peugeot 307(wagon).
Dad reckoned that the left indicator flashes quickly with brakes applied.
Didn't have a lot of time to sort it out for him, but had to have a peek.
Thinking bulb, trailer plug fault or earth.
Checked the bulb, all good, cut the wires to the trailer plug, no change.

Left bulb flashes dimly and slowly and cross talks with the tail and brake bulbs, so they all flash in unison dimly and slowly.
Bulb is dim on it's own(no tail/brake) and works, and brake and tail operate fine without the left indicator.

Had to pull the bulb holder contraption out to have a peek, easy enough to do, with its clip in design.

Turns out it's an ambidextrous design in that the bulb holder fits both left and right lenses
(unlike a D2 bulb holder, which is shaped to fit on a per side basis).

Easy check, see if the RHS bulb holder works ok on the LHS.

Plugged that in, all working fine, so convinced now it's an earthing issue on the bulb holder device.
Had to quickly check to see how the LHS bulb holder works on the RHS too tho.
Strangely enough works fine.
So .. it would seem that an easy fix was found!

Wrong! .. and here's the part I hate(about modern electrics).

Light design is a stack of 4 bulbs vertically, top is brake, second from the top is tail/park, third down is indicator, last one at the bottom is: LHS reverse light, RHS rear fog.

So with no changing or manipulation of the wiring, the fog light now operates as the reverse light, and the reverse light now operates as the fog light switch(no front fog lights, only a rear).
Lenses are sided, LHS only on the left, RHS only on the right.
So the power to those two bulbs doesn't operate on a fixed wire, but an ecu probably activates the specific bulb holder unit(whether fog or reverse bulb).

Told dad just to be very conscious of not accidentally operating the rear fog light whilst driving.
So, for now, at least he won't get pulled up for having a defective car in general usage, and he just needs to be careful when reversing .. till I can check more stuff on it.

Originally Posted by bee utey

On plastic multi bulb holders I've often had to solder on a direct earth wire to terminate at a screw somewhere, the factory earth connection carries too much current for the flimsy pins in the loom plugs.

That's my main plan ATM. Solder male spade terminal to the earth line on the holder, and then connect to the earth wire, to parallel the std plug.