Whoo hoo!..... lights again!

[Richard]

I've got a full sized backhoe/loader. The front lights work fine and when I first got the machine, I had to replace one/both bulbs in the rear lights.

Over the years, the rear lights stopped working. I always meant to dig into it but don't find myself working in the dark.... until last summer when we had a storm and I drove my road (dead end road) at 3:00 in the morning checking for downed trees. My front lights were fine but, got to a neighbors house and turned my fronts off to not blare their house.

No room to turn around, so I backed out...without rear lights. Was a pain in the butt so I decided when the weather got nice I'd start hunting the problem down.

Making a short story longer... I dug into this over last weekend. Got my meter out and took the switch on the side of the cab apart (I have a light switch for front lights on dash and another switch to my right for rear lights)

No power to the switch.

Looking around, I found a multi-pinned plug that was the wire harness for the cab, to the main body of the machine. Hunting & pecking for wire colors, I found the colors involved with my lights and checked the hot side of this plug.

Dead

hmm...now I have to go into my fuse box or inside the dash which means taking the steering wheel off.... this is getting to be larger & larger of a problem.

I look at my fuses just to be sure once again that it's not a blown fuse. I even check each fuse with ohm meter to make sure they're good. All fuses are good.

I go back to the switch box on the right side of the cab. It also has the interior light for the cab so those wires are in there.

Interestingly, it has yet another purple wire.... with nothing attached to it.

I go back to the plug mating the cab wires to the chassis and look for the purple wire. I check it's counter part and it's hot. I go back to the wire in the cab and it's hot there.... just dangling inside this junction box unused. (actually, now that I think of it, it might be for the rear wiper which also quit)

Regardless, I pulled the hot off the light switch and plugged the purple into it and viola, I now have rear lights!!!

If this is indeed the hot feed to the wiper, I'll take this trade anyday because I never (I mean NEVER) close my rear window so I don't need/use my wiper.

I'm so tickled about this....my wife thinks I'm a bit strange. It is SO nice to once again have rear work lights.

:thumbsup:

 

[jinman]

Excellent Richard!:thumbsup: I've never had to use the lights (yet) on my TLB, but one of these days. . . .

Do you have that irritating backup horn? I used to have one of those, but one day there was an "unfortunate incident" while I was working under my platform and those wires got "inavertently" disconnected. There is peace again in my house since my wife doesn't have to listen to the incessant, "Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. . . ."

 

[Richard]

Heh... well... the machine was purchased with the backup warning. The machine was bought at an auction and was previously owned by TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority).

My brother in law bought the machine for his rental business and when my wife gave me the green light, simply sold it to me. Somewhere in that process, the unit disappeared prior to me getting the machine.

I'm one who is on the retentive side and wants things to work properly so the absence of this grated on me for about the first six minutes of ownership, I've been fine ever since.