Re: 1952 250 convertible hydraulics wont work

Posted by HH56 On 2016/6/19 20:38:26

There are no fuses for those items. The hydraulic switches and wiring have a circuit breaker located at the pump. When they changed the starter solenoid is there a chance the pump did not get hooked back up properly? It connects to the battery post at the starter solenoid.

The brake, turn signal and tail lights is more puzzling. No fuse there either -- a circuit breaker on the headlight switch for the tail lights and a circuit breaker fed from the ign switch on the back of the instrument cluster for the turn signals. Brakes are fed off another circuit breaker on back of cluster with voltage all the time.

If it were only the brake and turn signals I would suspect the round plug under the edge of dash coming out of the steering column. Both functions use the same filament at the bulbs so wire from brake switch goes thru the turnsignal switch and then to the bulbs. If the tail lights are involved it makes that seem less likely because the tail light wire comes off the headlight switch and directly feeds the other filaments at the tail light bulbs. There may be an inline connector under the dash where one portion of the main loom joins the body loom. Not all cars have one but if you do and someone was working under the dash it is possible both plug and connector were loosened.

Did you jump with 12v and perhaps burn out the bulbs? Do the headlights and parking lights work? Any thing else not working -- license or trunk light or courtesy lights?

If the bulbs and connectors are OK another possibility is the ground. The lights rely on a solid connection between the housings and body. Sometimes storage in less than ideal conditions allows the surfaces to oxidize and ground is lost. Seems strange that would happen to both sides though.