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Rover 600....Side lights come on when brake pedal is pressed!

I have recently bought a Rover 600 Diesel.......all appeard ok until I drove it at night and noticed that when I pressed the brake pedal the side lights came on.

On further investigation, I found that the tail lights were coming on too, but that was not obvious as its a double fillament bulb.

Then I swiched on the sidelights........and guess what......the brake lights come on too.........so the brake circiut is energising the light circiut and the light circuit is energising the brake light circuit.

An odd problem.......I can see no obvious wiring bodges, and there's no evidence of any DIY having ever been done on the lighting circuit (spot lights etc)

Any ideas?

As a side line, what comeback do I have with the used car dealer? Is it a case of sold as seen, or as the car is not fit for use on a public highway would the trades description act apply.....ie not fit for the purporse. (the car would never pass an MOT with the lights in this state)

Reply to
Paul
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Sounds like a bad earth on one (or both) of the rear light clusters.

Not entirely sure how they're connected on the 600, but the usual arrangement is an 'edge connector' onto the rear light circuit board.

Pull off the connector, clean the circuit board connector up with some WD40 and a pan scourer - also clean the wiring connector (I tend to use a squirt of WD40 and a small piece of emery paper or a percision screwdriver to get right into the terminals).

Put it all back together, and 9 times out of 10 it will have fixed the problem.

Reply to
SteveH

Usually caused by a bad earth somewhere in or near the light clusters. Leyland cars have had that as a design feature for as long as I can remember. It seems Rover have preserved the tradition.

Dave Baker - Puma Race Engines

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Reply to
Dave Baker

snipped-for-privacy@aol.comma (Dave Baker) mumbled:

The wife's Clio did it the other day...the earth contact in the socket that connects to the back of the cluster had melted.

Reply to
Guy King

Have had a look at the rear light clusters and low and behold some monkey boy managed to get the bulbs mixed up.......

........in the offside cluster, the reversing lamp (a single filliment type) had the double fillament tail bulb fitted, and the tail light had the single fillament bulb fitted...........so I guess the single filament bulb was shorting the 2 contacts for the tail light causing my problem.....

I swapped them round and the problem was solved.......saving an embarassing trip to the local auto electrician to be told the above!!

Thank you all for your advice.

Reply to
Paul

Either a bad earth - although if all the sidelights are coming on because of this I'd expect them to be very dim - or a wrongly inserted or faulty twin filament bulb shorting across the two pins. Remove the bulbs one at a time and see if the fault goes.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

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