Hey guys,

I recently bought a 1988 RS, manual trans, v6 (yeah yeah I don't need a v8 I'm not a racer)

Anyways, I've done a lot to restore this car including going all LEDs, and noticed that my reverse light bulb 'sockets' were burned and corroded, so I've decided to replace them with a Dorman replacement.

My problem is - my "RIGHT" socket was a breeze because my replacement socket has two wires, and so did the original burned down unit.
My "LEFT" (driver side) reverse light bulb socket, however has THREE wires (WTF!), and my replacement socket has TWO.

I can turn some wrenches and stuff, but I don't want to meddle with electricity related stuff, so I just put my work to the halt for now..

How do I proceed in this replacement? I kind of read that the third light has to do with my car being manual trans? but how does that information help me hook up a currently 3 wire to my new 2 wired light bulb socket...

I did search this forum, I don't see anything.. any help is much appreciated. Thanks all.

 

The simple answer;

The driver's side has one ground wire and two positive wires.

Why is that?

Because of the two positive wires, one comes from the front of the car (from the reverse light switch) and powers the left reverse light. The other wire connects to the LH reverse light's positive wire, and runs over to the passenger side reverse light, to power it. You will determine which of the three on the left side is the negative, and attach that to the wire on the socket that connects to the large metal piece of the bulb that is supposed to be grounded. The other two (positive) wires will be connected TOGETHER, and then connected to the wire that feeds power to the small solder tit at the bottom of the bulb. Ring it out properly, so your SURE you've got the two positive wires connected together, and NOT with one of the positive wires accidentally connected to the negative, and you'll be fine.

See, didn't I tell ya it was simple?

 

PS, if you look towards the lower left side of this handy wiring diagram, You'll see that the positive going wires for the reverse lights will be light green, VS the negative which are black. So, connect the two light green wires together as described above, and you'll be good to go

 

The ground wires are black and all go to ... ground. Wires that aren't black are "hot" (get 12V when the bulb is supposed to light). You can use a butt splice, with the wire from the new socket going into one side, and the others going to the other side of the splice. Any wires that aren't black can be treated the same way.

In some cars, both the hot and ground wires to the BU lamps are that way. The hot comes in from the Fisher Body connector to the driver's side bulb, and another hot leaves that bulb and goes over to the pass side. Sometimes there's only one chassis ground connection for all the lights so there might be both multiple hots AND grounds at some sockets in such cars.

 

Thank you guys so much 🙏 going to try the fix tomorrow!