It's not a "short", that would cause a blown fuse.
What is happening is that most likely, there is a poor connection. There
are three common places for crud to interfere with lights. In order of
likelihood, they are:
1. A poor fit for the bulbs outer brass base to the socket, or else the
socket is cruddy inside. The cure for this is to go to your friendly local
NAPA store and buy a "light socket cleaning brush". This a miniature bottle
brush type thingy with stiff stainless wire "bristles" that is exactly the
right size to clean the accumulate crud off the inside of the socket, and
also to burnish up the electrical button that contacts the base of the bulb.
2. The spring that pushes the electrical contact button against the base
contacts on the bulb is weak or broken, you'll need to push the fiberboard
circular bottom of the socket out of the socket to the outside world where
you can see it (push on the wires behind the socket and wiggle the little
board out of the socket), and then inspect the spring that rides behind it,
replace or clean as necessary, or
3. The socket itself is making poor contact to the metal housing it is
mounted in. This is hard to fix, sometimes the only way is to solder an
additional wire onto the metal bulb socket and connect said wire to ground
somewhere. Sometimes you can tighten up the crimp in the metal flange to
make it make better contact, but this problem often returns. Depending on
what part of the country the car spent its life in, this may be very likely
to be your problem, it usually happens to cars from the damp climates.
If none of the above seems to cure your problem, you can replace the whole
socket, wires and all. Y and Z's wiring supplies in San Bernardino CA
stocks these for just about every car ever made. There are probably other
vendors also, but these folks are nice to deal with and they will know
exactly what you need.
Dick Benjamin
----- Original Message -----
From: <Imperial59crown@xxxxxxx>
To: <mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2002 8:55 PM
Subject: IML: My bulbs won't stay on!
> I have finally been able to get a new bulb put in my '59 left front turn
> signal, and the rear licensee plate light, and after feeling much
> accomplishment of getting my huge fingers to do this job, and see the
lights
> working again, I got out of the car tonight to check them only to find
they
> are both out again. I put another bulb in the front turn light, and was
happy
> it was working again, but when I checked later it was out again also. When
I
> removed the bulb, everything looked fine, I could see no broken filaments.
> Could this be a short, and why are they working when I put them in, and
not
> later? Bill '59 Crown
>
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