Thread: Showing Signs of Life

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Life has been getting in the way of my hot rod build...so I took the day off and spent it in the garage. This would have been more fun if it wasn't 110 degrees in the shade.

I have the Caddy wired, but there is one more gremlin I am trying to overcome. The headlights and the turn signals are all working, but when I turn on the parking lights or headlights the turn signals do not light up.

I am using the wiring harness from the 1992 Suburban that I took the engine out of. So far I am glad I did because I get some new car luxuries that would have taken me forver to wire myself.

I have three wires (brown, black, and dark green/yellow) running to the turn signals, but the turn signals are 1941 chevy tailights with just two wires. the only way the turn signals work is to connect the ground and then the green or yellow depending on which side. The minute I connect the brown to anything the turn signals stop working, but the running lights turn on.

Am I missing something?

Thank you

you have 1157 in the tail lights you need two contacts sockets . socket body is your ground . it needs to be grounded the black is ground the brown i think is running side markers the green and yellow is turn. to run all of them you will need more shockets and blubs to run the side marker lights

should be....black is ground, brown is taillight and the yellow and green wires are brake/ turn signals. Do your '41 tail lights have dual or single filament bulbs? If they are dual filament bulbs with only two wires coming out of the housing, the bulb will get it's ground through the housing and one wire will be for the tail light filament and the other for the brake/turn light filament. In that case the ground wire will connect to the housing.

I sthere a way to adapt the 41 tailights with two contact sockets?

I have dual filament bulbs

Let me see if I have this right.

Green and black coming out of tailight.

Connect black to brown
Connect green to brake/turn (yellow)
Connect ground to light housing
?????

i did all my 50 chevy they did not have turns on the chevy new you some times re work the socket for the two contack with a new disc with the two contacks with a pig tail on them or go to the parts store and buy some new socket s to fit in the tail light housing the old sockets are stamp in and can be ground off and new sockets put in the new housings

you should already have 2 contact sockets for the 1157 bulbs......unless the '41 didn't originally have brake lights. you can buy the little disc that goes down in the socket with a short piece of wire soldered onto it and a new spring at the parts store. I'm not sure if the 1157 parts will fit in a 1156 shell though.

Originally Posted by 37 Caddy

I have dual filament bulbs

Let me see if I have this right.

Green and black coming out of tailight.

Connect black to brown
Connect green to brake/turn (yellow)
Connect ground to light housing
?????

no you do not connect black to brown the brown should be hot check with a test light . back is ground black to body steel ground the rest is right

Pat I think we are posting at the same time...hehehe. Your 50 had single filament bulbs?

Originally Posted by 35chevy

you should already have 2 contact sockets for the 1157 bulbs......unless the '41 didn't originally have brake lights. you can buy the little disc that goes down in the socket with a short piece of wire soldered onto it and a new spring at the parts store. I'm not sure if the 1157 parts will fit in a 1156 shell though.

yep that is rigth i did the back with new discs the 1157 are in the old shockets and re did the front runners for turns so i could have both

check with a test light

There you go....works every time

I know it wasn't supposed to work, but I ignored what I thought I knew about electrical wiring and it worked. After going to Napa and getting dual sockets I realized that is what I had. The NAPA sockets also had two black wires coming off them, but obviously you can't have two grounds. So I connected the two live wires from the wiring harness to the two wires on the light and I wrapped the ground from the wiring harness around the mounting screw on the housing...and voila...everything works like it should.

And nothing caught on fire. Did I mention I hate wiring.

Thank you for all of your help.