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The circuit for the left and right courtesy lights are hot when the power is off. I am not finding where the power is coming from. I assume the problem is with the accessory circuit breakers. The fog light circuit is used to turon the lights. The fog light has 3 connections on the back but only 1 wire is shown on the wiring diagram to the fog light button. Is there power from the ignition switch to the accessory circuit breake? The wire to the back seat reading lights is also hot when power is off.

The courtesy and reading lights will always be live, unless the battery is disconnected. Nothing to fix!

As said above, the feeds for those lights are always "hot." They use a grounding-type switch to complete the circuit. That way, the dome light comes on when you open the door regardless of whether the ignition is on or off or the headlight switch is on or off.

As 53 Cavalier and Kev said, in your 48 the courtesy lights are always powered thru the auxiliary or sometimes also called the accessory breaker.

In your car the aux breaker gets its power directly from the always hot ammeter which gets power in via wire 1-R directly from the battery connection at the starter solenoid. Out of the ammeter the wire is labeled 2-RY. That wire is spliced and after the splice the wire changes numbers to 21A for the breaker and 21B for the ign switch. They use the breaker in post as a convenient connection point for additional always powered on feeds that might get fused somewhere else - there is a 21 wire that also feeds the headlight switch which has it own breaker and a 29 for the clock which has a fuse both coming off that post.

The feed for the front courtesy lights is wire 24 from the output or protected post on the breaker. The rear courtesy light loom(s) and any other always powered on accessories would also be fastened to that same post.

On the switch that only has a single wire -- presumably you are speaking of the wire from the courtesy lights, did you mean to say map light switch instead of fog light switch? The Map switch is the only switch that normally would be connected to the front courtesy lights and all it does is ground the wire when it is turned on. Grounding the wire from the map light switch or either of the door switches will turn on the courtesy lights. Since you have a station sedan and that model could be had as a very bare boned car perhaps there was no map switch or courtesy lights in the car originally so a previous owner did some alternative wiring.

If you did mean to say Fog Light switch, that switch does have 3 terminals and it is possible someone has jerry rigged something because the switch would normally not have anything to do with courtesy lights. Possibly someone used a fog light switch in place of a damaged or missing Map switch. In typical operation the fog light switch is only an outside light switch and gets supplied power from the headlight switch breaker at terminal B. Switch terminal F would go to the fog lights and terminal T would have a wire going back to the headlight switch tail light terminal to make sure the tail lighta also turn on when the fog lights are on if the driver did not have the headlight switch on when using the fog lights.

If someone did add courtesy lights or use a fog light switch instead of a Map switch to turn them on, since you said the courtesy lights are always powered (as they should be) then to make them work with the fog light switch the wire from the courtesy lights should be on fog switch terminal F or T leaving one of the terminals open and unused while B would need to connect to ground instead of going to a power source. The switch could not be used for fog lights at the same time as the courtesy lights while wired that way. By running an extra wire to the rear courtesy lights it could also be used to turn on rear courtsy lights at the same time as the fronts though..

Howard
I am so sorry
I meant to say the map light switch.
So when I connect t the courtesy light switch it sparks, so that is okay?
Mike

Quote:
Depends on the size of the spark. If it is a fairly small spark and the lights come on when it happens then it is just current thru the bulbs so should be OK. Turn off the switch and try again. If lights stay off and no spark then all is well.

If it is a large spark and nothing seems to happen with the lights or if the lights were already on when you made the connection that sparked then that could be a problem. You would need to verify exactly where and what the wire is connected to by checking for anything else that might have come on and make sure nothing else is connected to the switch other than what I have described above.

I connected the left courtesy lights. It was a small spark but the wire got real hot and it started smoking. The right was the same.

There is definitely something wrong. To have a wire get hot enough to smoke means something is pulling a lot of current -- perhaps a short somewhere or some kind of tie connection to a load way too big for the wire. It is going to be a matter of tracing that circuit from the breaker to the bulbs to the door switches and to th map light switch to check for any bad wring or make sure nothing else has been inadvertently connected.


IF the courtesy light circuit is stock Packard factory install it should follow the diagram at the left of page 2 in the 48-49 wiring diagram reasonably closely -- getting power from the breaker and having the map light switch or the door switches ground the wire that is apparently getting hot. Do the wires going to the door switches get hot. If they are OK and opening either front door turns the lights on then it is something related to the wire run between the courtesy light loom and the switch. If wiring to a door switch is also getting hot then there could be something tied into the loom that is pulling a load. It is odd that something that gets the wire hot enough to smoke did not also cause the breaker to trip so I would verify the courtesy lights are connected to the protected post on the circuit breaker and not the battery input post.

If the courtesy light circuit is something added by a previous owner or a factory loom that might have been transplanted from another year then all bets are off and it will require a lot of troubleshooting to figure out exactly what was done.