Tuning up tail light

[dicklague]

A couple days ago my son noticed that one of my stop lights was out on my 1973 911. It is a pretty bright led bulb so I assumed that there was probably corrosion on the contacts.

Today I tackled the job and removed the plastic lens, the left bulb had corroded contacts. I took out all the bulbs out and cleaned the contact and used "bulb grease" before installing the bulbs. I also used a small screwdriver to pull out the copper contacts a bit more for more tension.

On the right side I did the same, but the brake light/running light socket went in when I tried to tweak the contacts. I had to pull the whole enclosure and realized that one of the pot metal tangs had broken off, so I used JB weld to epoxy the socket in place. that made it really rugged. and better than new.

I also put a little epoxy on the other tangs just to strengthen them in the housing. The insulator is some sort of bakelite that is held in place by bent pot metal tangs. The epoxy - JB Weld bonds them in place really well.



You can see the grey epoxy above. Let it dry a couple of hours. Also see a little epoxy on the other sockets.



I resealed the cover with clear silicone and put the light back in place.





These early cars need a bit of TLC in the rear tail light area occasionally.

[Brando]

I had to do the same epoxy fix on the bulb sockets for the front turn signals. There is a piece of hex steel with a very tiny bead welding it to the socket that has the spring. Over time the tension from the spring causes the tiny bead to break and your bulb is dead -- wondering why replacing the bulb still doesn't fix it...

[tazzieman]

Did the same recently, found my previous JB weld fix had broken.
This time I used fast cure Araldite and a couple of layers extra. I'm sure there are other ways to reinforce the contact eg bits of wire, metal.

[dicklague]

I am going to install higher powered LED bulbs next.

I am also researching bulbs and lights to change the whole system over to LED. I will have to install resistors in the directional circuit to give enough load for the blinker to work. But I do have the resistors.

I am shopping for all the right pieces to get this done.