Dome light wiring- news to me

[Lou Earle]

Was working on the dome light in 54 station wagon- or shall we call it the 54 SUV??? Meaning- sharp usable vehicle??

I noticed that the dome light switch on post had only one wire-so I checked a few wiring diagrams and here is what I found

1950 vehicles went to a ground interruption system on the switch That is the ground wire is to the switch or button not the hot wire

1949 and back was the opposite hot wire interruption by the switch.

If you are not aware of this you can really get a big surprise if you do it backwards

aka hot spark and melt down of wires.

Just thought I would pass it along

Lou

[Normspeed]

My 53 is like that. Makes it easy to add additional switches or accessories. One thing our cars could really use is a nice fuse block.

[greg g]

Well I noticed this phenomenum up close and personal. Seems my coupe had an add on under dash courtesy light. To me it looked pretty hokey as it used an bulb holder with a dual contact base, and a single element bulb with a wire that I thought came from the door switch. Well the wire came from power, to one wire on the pigtail, through the bulb to the other wire of the pig tail, to the grounding door switch. In my ignorance, I replaced the bulb holder with a single wire re wired as I htough it should be, opend the door, cooked everything when I pluggen in the conector. Big DUH!!!! So becareful out there, I guess that is what they make continuity testors and circuit testors for.

[Norm's Coupe]

One thing our cars could really use is a nice fuse block.

If you are rewiring you car, it's easy to add a fuse block. You can buy them from many sources. Just add the fuse block, then run the wires to it on separate circuits from the block. That's what I plan to do, if and when I ever get around to rewiring my coupe. By splitting the circuits, you can run more accessories without blowing fuses. Would work the same as when you split circuits in your house current.