Reverse light troubleshooting Options

[Red72]

OK, so I picked up a '72 1.7 through the winter, and I'm working on getting items cleared before I go for safety to get it on the road. While underneath, I found that a terminal from the backup light switch on the transmission was broken...remove the switch, it's not even the right item, and the pin through the trans housing isn't there either. OK, so I replace all of that, still no reverse lights...take the lenses off, no bulbs...and it appears that a PO has re-sprayed the interior of the light, painting some of the conductive bits in the process. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) Now I'm trying to figure out how the PO had it safetied in the first place...I suspect it was simply signed off without checking anything.

So I'm going back to basics to trace the whole system, and make sure things are good electrically all the way through, before I tackle trying to clean any excess paint away. I've found the lines at the regulator board which go to the switch, but there is no DC voltage across them when the car is on...there is a slight AC voltage...but I'm assuming I should be getting DC right from the get go. Turn signals work just fine, so I know the fuse for that grouping of lights is good.

What kind of voltage should I be seeing go to the backup light switch? Thoughts regarding anything on the regulator board that might affect not getting voltage to the switch?

Thanks for any help...planning to start a thread soon to document the work I'm going to be doing overall. The body is pretty sound, the interior needs some work, but a whole lot less work than the scratch build Lotus 7 project I parted out to get something like the 914 that I could drive.

Stephen