I posted this in the Ramcharger section as well but figured it would get more reads here. Mod if you need to delete the other feel free.

Well I took two years hiatus from the mopar family. I sold my truck and bought a dumb fancy car. Well I felt the need to bring back my manhood and sold that and bought a 1984 RC. Now I have to get to work on fixing its little issues. Such as:

All the lights worked when I bought it but now I have seem to have lost the blinkers and the taillights. Just to be clear, the blinkers entirely and taillights entirely. Now I have no electrical experience so any help on where to start would be great. I have to replace a power steering hose and I am going to check all the fuses. I assume its not them since they should be on separate fuses and they both went out at the same time. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Do the brake lights or 4 way flashers work? Do the front turn signals and parking lights work?

 

Seal,
the brake lights, rear running lights, and all four turn signals are out. None of the flashers work. I have not had the chance to check the reverse lights. At first I thought it was just a fuse for the turn signals but then the brake lights were out too. I am going to check all the fuses tomorrow and see how they look. The bad thing is I have a few days to fix all this before the RC becomes my primary vehicle.

 

maybe the 12v+ going to the fuse panel is loose or corrodid?

 

it almost sound like a bad ground since they all quit working at the same time.

 

Grounds are always a good place to start but with front and rear using different grounds I would start by checking the feed voltage to fuses #3 and #5 with a multi-meter or test light. #3 (flashers) should have constant voltage while #5 (turn signals) will only have voltage with the key on. The fuse panel is about half way through the wiring for these circuits and you can then start to trace backward or forward from there.
If you have power at the fuses pull a bulb and check for power at the light socket. If there is power at the light socket it is most definitely a ground problem.
I will try to check back here regularly today when I am not plowing our 20 inches of snow.

 

thanks for the tips guys, well since I don't have a test light or a mulitmeter this could be difficult. I will have to call some folks and see if I can round one up. Seal I have family in town that leave today so I prob wont be able to get to it until later in the afternoon so don't worry about check back until later tonight. Have fun with all that snow!

 

You can make a test light out of 2 pieces of wire(I like 36 inch pieces), a 12 volt bulb, and a soldering iron.

 

Ah Ha thats pretty genius. Ok so I am basically an idiot when it come to electrical stuff so please help educate me. If I wanted to test at the fuse where exactly would I stick the probes or the wires? Would I just stick them in the two sides where the fuse would go? And where would I stick them to check at the empty bulb socket?

 

Ground one wire of the test light and stick the other in the fuse sockets. You can't always tell which side is the feed so just do both sides one at a time. For the light sockets look inside the socket and you will see two contacts in there. Ground one wire of the test light and touch the other to one of the little contacts. Here again you might not be able to tell which contact is which so do both, one at a time. For the sockets whichever lights you are checking they must be on.

When you make the test light one wire goes to the brass shell of the bulb and the other I like to solder to both contacts on the bottom of the bulb if the bulb has 2. That way if one filament breaks the other still works. I also like to tin the loose ends of the wires with a dab of solder.