Fixing Reverse Lights... Gotta Check Everything!

[DaBigKahuna]

Ok here's a good one.

The electrics on my truck are ok but there's a lot of little things that don't work on it so I've been attacking them one at a time.

Today I went after the passenger side reverse light. Drivers side works fine. After about an hour of trouble shooting, I figured that the bulb wasn't grounding.

Cleaned the bulb socket... nope that's not it.
Cleaned the where the screws contact the housing.. nope that's not it.
Took the housing out and cleaned the area of the housing that contacts the fender and the matching area on the fender... nope still no ground.

More poking around with the MultiMeter and I figured out the problem. The socket must be crimped or swedged or pressed into the housing. For some reason there was no electrical contact between the housing and the socket.

The fix: Since the housing and the socket couldn't be separated I cleaned up an area on both pieces, grabbed a scrap of 10 ga wire I had around, and soldered a "jumper" between the two pieces.