Electrickery and lights ...

1989 90, ex 19j TD, now with a 300 Tdi engine. Wiring loom for the engine is simple and all is working, wiring loom for lights is a bit broke .. again!

A few weeks ago I had a fire that burned a lot of connections away, but a good mate, @top-cat, fixed it all and all worked well driving to Worcester and back this weekend .. however, the front lights on the drivers side now don't work .. that's neither the side light, headlight, main beam or indicator .. but the spots which are triggered by the flasher stick do work OK. All other lights are fine ...

Thinking it through, all the fuses are intact and tested OK, noting they are set for left and right side lighting, the relays obviously work for the spots but they're separate to the main lights wiring, so I'm guessing the issue might be the right front lighting relay, if there is such a thing!! (I ain't a sparky and I don't like putting on friends @top-cat to constantly help all the time)

Bearing this in mind, can anyone say (or photo of location) which relay (I presume in the fusebox) I need to change or at least test to see how it works. Also, how do I test and replace a relay? (The ones fitted to the spots aren't mounted in a relay carrier)

Any help would be gratefully received, when I get back from work in a bit ..

I've just had a hell of a lot of fun and games converting all of my lighting to Wipac LEDs. It's actually a great kit and cannot fault Wipac! But basically the wiring loom on my 1985 90 has been hacked around and some weird things done over the years. I've discovered a few things about mine that may be useful to you. Basically you may have just lost 1 earth for one of your lights. Maybe a snapped wire or failed spade/bullet connector. I found that all of my right hand rear cluster was sharing the earth of my foglight on the same cluster. Depending on the year of vehicle, the lights may be self earthing (2 screws on the top of the lamp cover, 3 screws underneath that screw the body of the lamp holder onto your vehicle - one of these screws will be self earthing the lamp)
In my case when swapped to LED I of course ended up removing this shared earth as the new foglight was no longer self earthing!

Maybe snip the black wire going into a non-working sidelight, strip and bare the end and then touch it against the body work/chassis whilst it is meant to be on - if it works - its an earth fault.

I think it's almost certainly a broken earth connection. You're looking for black wires coming from all of the non-working lamps. At some point they join together and go to a screw on the body near the lights. That's either disconnected or the wire is broken between that joining together and the body.

Check for continuity between one of the earth bullets on a non working light and a known good earth. I imagine you'll find it is the issue.

run a new earth strap from chassis to body/light earths - clean up main earth connections - belt and braces...............