Today, I managed to break my '98 UK Spec Defender. And I absolutely suck at electricity.
The day started simple enough. I'm going through the cooling system, and have all the hoses off and was at a "natural stopping point" as I'm waiting for RN to send me a new water pump, thermostat, et al. So I thought "what else can I do here in the nice warm garage while it's raining outside?"
Remember when I lost tail lights, and we tracked it to a bad ground, and I only have tail lights when the rear door is closed, and sometimes if it's not closed right nothing lights up in back? I thought "now is a good time to put in a good ground." And that's when all hell broke loose.
Rear door card off, I installed a nice Blue Seas bus bar, in the process breaking a 1/16 and 7/64 cobalt drill bits. The 1/16 was from pushing too hard, the other when the door slipped a bit as I was drilling. Bus bar installed, I attached the ground wires from the rear wiper and third brake light to the bar, and then ran a ten gauge wire from the bar to the hinge backing plate (seemed like a good place on the body to ground, and the nut/bolt was right there. Turned on the lights, and... nothing. No tail lights, no brake lights, nothing.
Reset the wires to how things were. Still nothing. I have turn signals and license plate light, the rear fog lamp was working, I didn't check the reverse light, but no tail lights/brake lights.
Checked all fuses. They were good. Started tracing things back, looking for a possibly disconnected wire. Saw an empty "bullet connector", and thought that might be it, but according to my book, purple is "always hot", for dome lights, radio, etc (fuse 2). Pulled the cover plate on the RH side, to see if there was a disconnect behind there, but couldn't see anything. It's a bit hard to work in that space with the jump seat in the way, so I'll probably try and pull the seat tomorrow. What could go wrong? I did find another purple wire coming out of the main feed, but that was very corroded. Will work on that tomorrow too.
Oh, and then I checked things one last time... and now no fog light. Sure, the light on the dash says it's on, but no light. Maybe the bulb just burned while I was working on it?
I'm starting to think it's the ignition barrel. I noticed on the wiring diagram that all lights go through that (ignition needs to be "on" for the lights to work). Noticed last week I had to "wiggle" the key to get the starter to turn. Trying to figure out if I need the whole barrel or can get by with just the switch.
No idea what's going on back there, but I do hate electricity.
