Chris,
I'm a little foggy right now (long day) and I honestly can't remember
where I read what I wrote to you earlier. Maybe we ought to ask John,
since he's the one who mentioned this. John, are you out there?
I just remember a debate around that time about the size of all
taillights (considered too small and too dim), and a concern that if
there was a failure of one system, or circuit, and all your taillights
were on that circuit, that the car would no longer have any rear
lights. I don't remember what the result of this debate was (what, if
any, laws were passed).
I do know that I have lost my brake lights and still had taillights,
and vice versa. Why the system on the '67 would be considered unsafe
and not the system on the '68, I don't know. Personally, that's one of
the things about the 67s I prefer-- the way the whole side lights up.
Aesthetically, I think it's nicer than the '68.
If it was a cost-cutting thing it's odd, because in '69 they went to a
sequential system, which I would guess is more expensive than what was
on '67 or '68.
Anybody in the Federal Gov't in '68? :)
Mark
On Friday, June 27, 2003, at 08:09 PM, imperial67@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Mark,
>
> This doesn't add up to me.
>
> All six taillamps are on the same circuit as each other (both years),
> and all four or six brake/turn lamps (for 67 or 68, respectively) were
> on another circuit. A failure in the taillamp circuit will not
> substitute a brake lamp, so if the fuse for all of your parking lamps
> blew, you'd be driving around with no taillamps. If your brake lamp
> fuse blew (or some other circuit failure occurred), you'd have no
> brake lamps but it would not affect your taillamps.
>
> Further, it was perfectly legal in 1967, 1968 and is still legal to
> have a single dual-filament bulb per side in the rear of the car (a
> Ford Focus or Dodge neon has just such a set-up).
>
> The only safety benefit I can imagine from the 1968 setup would be
> that having the inner lamp not used by the brake and turn signals, a
> non-flashing turn signal would be slightly more obvious at night
> (because you could see that part of the lamp is brighter).
>
> Honestly, I think they just did it to save a few cents, or chances are
> some people might have complained that the giant brake lamps of the
> '67 were too bright to cars following at night. One things for sure,
> the 67 certainly compensated for the tiny brake lamps of the '64-66!
>
> Chris in LA
> 67 Crown
> 78 NYB Salon
>
> -------Original Message-------
> From: Mark McDonald <tomswift@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: 06/27/03 10:53 AM
> To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: IML: Fixing Govt mandated 68 bulb problems: was bulbs for
> '68taillights
>
>>
>> I believe the rationale was that if there was a malfunction with one
>> set
> of lights, say the brake lights, and both were on the same system, that
> you would then lose the taillights as well and the car would be nearly
> invisible from behind at night. In other words, they wanted to insure
> that at least some lights were always on and working on the back of the
> car to prevent rear end collisions. The compromise John refers to, I
> guess, is that they didn't create 2 separate systems but used different
> bulbs (?).
>
> It seems hard to believe now, with well lighted roads and cars with
> huge
> taillights, but way back when it wasn't uncommon for a car to come up
> on
> another car from behind at night, and the driver of the 2nd car might
> not even see the first car until they hit. Even with working
> taillights, some of the fixtures were so small that if the bulb was bad
> or the light got dirty you couldn't see the car and whammo.
>
> Mark
>
> Christopher Hoffman wrote:
>
>> The government made them kill the third brake/turn bulbs for '68? Why?
>>
>> Chris in LA
>> 67 Crown
>> 78 NYB Salon
>>
>> John in Atlanta (Imp67cc64@xxxxxxx) wrote:
>>
>> Dick has a point. Another line of attack to correct your problem
>> would be to get two bulb sockets with a bit of wiring from a junkyard
>> and convert your taillight only sockets to signal/brake/taillight
>> sockets. All would use 1157s and so you would eliminate the
>> bright/dim problem while fixing something the govt made Chrysler
>> compromise on in 1968. As you know, I am a stickler for original, but
>> I did this on the 68 conv I had and would not hesitate to do it on any
>> subsequent 68's I own.
>
>
>
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