Hello, My name is Charlie and last year I purchased my first Corvette. I have been working on it and have fixed a few problems and enjoy driving the car. It is a 1986 convertible that was supposedly raffled off at the 1986 Indy 500. I have reached out to Indy to try and verify that. I have a question about the interior lights. Both door map lights work and the drivers side and rear courtesy lights work, but I cant get the passenger side courtesy lights in the door or footwell to work. Any suggestions on where I might start?

 

Welcome to the site.
I'm assuming you have tried new bulbs. Are you getting voltage at the lamp?

 

I do have. When bulb in footwell lamp is installed, I have power across both sides of bulb. The map light in the passenger door is new and has voltage there also.The map light function works on both sides of the car.

 

If the bulb has power on both sides, then it has a bad ground.
Before the age of computer controlled cars, door switches grounded the circuit. Now with computer controls and lights on timers, I dont know just how they are wired, but having power on both sides shows an open ground.

 

I kinda thought as much. Is it possible the ground problem could be at the door switch or somewhere else? When I first got the car the passenger side door switch was bent over and un-hooked. replaced the switch and the door light assembly. That fixed the map light, but no change in the courtesy lamps on the right side. The interior lights do go off when the switch is held or door is closed. if it isn't at the switch, any suggestions as to where I might start looking? I would appreciate any help with this. Thanks

 

Congrats on your new '86 vert and welcome to the Forum.

I suggest picking up a copy of the '86 Corvette FSM. It has full electrical and mechanical details on your Vette.

 

Thanks, I do have a copy of that, I will do some more digging.

 

Welcome to the Corvette Forum!!

I have a 1988 C4 and it had a really strange bunch of electric gremlins that were driving me nuts. I had low voltage on some circuits but nothing obvious to the naked eye. I started at the battery and followed a large gauge Red wire from the battery terminal to a little post on the frame rail behind the battery on my Corvette. The red wire supplies Un-Fused 12 VDC power to this post where it connects to several Fusible links. The fusible links are what supplies the power to most of your interior of your Corvette. On my 1988 it was covered in corrosion and causing the voltage drop that affected my entire car. I cleaned the post and all the connectors to allow the full battery voltage get to the fuse block. My fuse block was also corroded and the fuses themselves were corroded as well. After cleaning the fuse block I replaced the fuses as they were good to the eye but would not let any current go through them.

One more thing, These C4's have several ground straps and each one is important. My radio worked but not the antenna, after replacing the ground strap that goes between the exhaust and the body the antenna started working properly. If you are having a ground issue look in you FSM and see where they were installed on your Corvette. It is critical for the engine to be grounded properly as the computer activates the injectors to fire by sending a ground signal to complete the circuit on the injectors.

Good Luck with your ground issues! You will be out cruising in your Corvette in no time!

Best Regards,
Chris