Date:         Mon, 1 Sep 2003 18:38:16 -0400
Reply-To:     Kim Brennan <kimbrennan@MAC.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Kim Brennan <kimbrennan@MAC.COM>
Subject:      Re: Wanted: Part for '91 Vanagon Carat Wolfsburg
In-Reply-To:  <000201c370c8$a67a2a20$4bdb030a@Pituiterry>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

On Monday, September 1, 2003, at 04:35  PM, Terrence Clark wrote:

>  I found this strange because there is nothing
> malfunctioning: headlights work, fog lights work and the dash light are
> fine.

Let me make a guess. You added the fog lights recently (say in the last
year or two?)

They are your problem, most likely. You see, the original connectors
had been sitting for a long time oxidizing. And because there wasn't
anything connecting to them there wasn't anything to rub off the
oxidizing layer as normally happens.

When you added the fog lights, you probably didn't put any sand
paper/emery cloth to the connector on the fuse block. So that oxidizing
layer has been acting as a resistor. As you've used the fog lights,
you've slowly been melting the connector.

I had this problem a year ago or so. I got the connector from a parts
Vanagon and swapped the connectors over to the new connector. I also
used emery cloth on both sides of the connector. The trickiest portion
was getting an extraction tool for the differing sizes of the pins (I
was fortunate to have a friend that could find those extraction tools
at his work.)