Boot light keeps blowing fuse

[Steve Walker]

I've had some that do that, but most haven't and neither of our current cars (or the kit car) do. So from personal experience only, about 10% have done it.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

I've been stuck on the ramp of the Portsmouth-Caen ferry. Back in the '90s, with the smaller ferries, the ramp from the ferry and the ramp from the land both sloped downwards quite steeply, causing a deep V. We drove off the ferry and as the front of the car came up, the back went down and the towbar hit the ramp. That was enough to trigger the impact switch and cut the fuel pump. Of course the switch was at the bottom of the boot, under the spare wheel and the boot was packed solid!

The next time we went, we'd wired a bypass switch - good job as it triggered on a number of journeys, but as we'd switched the bypass on before boarding, the engine kept running.

In the winter my house and car keys are separated, so that I can start warming and de-icing the car and my wife can lock up as she comes out to join me. One Christmas we went away. When we returned, we could not find the keys. Our son was only months old and needed feeding. We had to get a locksmith to get us in and change the lock.

About 18 months later I decided to take the seats out of the car as part of a really deep clean. I found the missing keys under the passenger seat - pretty well exactly in the middle, but suspended right up against the bottom of the seat (why I'd not been able to see them before) over the seat occupancy sensor wire! I still can't understand how they could have got there.

Our keys are left in the doors both front and back, in case of needing to exit in an emergency. I know the security risks, but I've never experienced someone breaking in or stealing my car, whereas I have been in a house fire.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

My current car has bulbholders and bulbs on both sides, but there isn't even any wiring to the nearside one!

Yes, there are a whole load of different, poor arrangements.

I had a mk2 Sierra. They all had the same rear lights, but different bulbholders and wiring harnesses. Some had the tail lights/brake lights next to the indicators and the fog lights as the furthest inboard. Others (including mine) had the tail lights/fog lights next to the indicator and the brake lights furthest inboard - far better, especially when the fog lights are on, to have a new pair of lights come on when you brake rather than an already illuminated pair brighten a bit.

Some have the indicator inside the headlamp lens and the rear indicator inside a circular brake light. Both useless.

Another problem with DRLs is that around town, drivers see the road in front lit up by them and as so many cars have permanently lit dashes, they don't realise that they've got no lights on at the back.

I'd require that all dash illumination only comes on when the lights are on - they'd notice a lot quicker when they tried to look at the speedo and couldn't see it!

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

Indeed. Although I'm not 100% sure that my numberplate light comes on with the sidelights when the ignition is off - it operates separately when there are no lights on, coming on by itself when the car is unlocked.

SteveW

[dennis]

Fog lights are covered in the fog light section.

The wife's astra has the front indicators below the bumper. I thought they were fog lights when we first looked at the carin the showroom.

[Steve Walker]

None of my instrument lights stay on with the sidelights if the ignition is off.

I had forgotten the number plate light, but as I have said elsewhere it

*might* not stay on either - it is certainly switched separately. It comes on alone when the car is unlocked - very useful for avoiding catching the towball when passing the back of the car.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

That plug looks very much like the one used at the end of the cupboard unit in Sprite caravans of the late '70s - although the socket was just a plastic, surface mounted one.

SteveW

[invalid]

At a rough guess everyone. Do you not think that you should be able to use parking lights all night or do you think its normal to get out of bed and charge the battery a few times a night if you want to use the parking lights.

BTW its stupid answer like you just used that makes you look like a troll.

Why would I I have a proper battery that does what it should, if yours doesn't then get it fixed like a normal person would.

No I would do what the manufacturers do and fit a better battery.

Because you keep stating that they get old and stop doing their job but are still OK.

As far as I am concerned you have trolled enough and you cango back to half brains with someone else.

[Chris J Dixon]

I had a puzzler a couple of years ago. I was due to drop off my partner, as she wasn't using her car that day. Both keys were on my key ring, so I unlocked both cars for her to pick up some stuff, locked hers, popped a bag in my boot, flung my coat on the back seat, shut the door and now found that I had no keys.

We searched high and low, in likely and unlikely places, but after half an hour admitted defeat, used the spare set and carried on.

We were away the next weekend, still a little concerned about the keys, but since we had discounted any chance of them being at large, reassured ourselves that all would be well.

Back home I started an even more comprehensive search of the car, removing all contents, looking behind trim... I was on the point of ringing the insurance company. Eventually, more in hope than expectation, I felt in the slim pocket on the back of the driver's seat.

If I hadn't experienced it myself, I would not have believed it possible.

Chris

[NY]

Sod's Law that it only happens when there is a lot of luggage in the boot.

I'm used to finding that my car grounds where a gradient changes suddenly from flat to steeply sloping upwards. When we were looking at houses, we discounted three where the bumpers grounded on the drive as it sloped steeply up from the road - in one case I even tried reversing up to see if there was more clearance than forwards, but it was no better. And that's not a low-slung sports car or a car with a very long overhang behind the rear wheel - just a bog-standard Peugeot 308. I even managed to ground my wife's Honda CR-V (a 4x4 with higher ground clearance). All these occasions were at low speed, inching forwards and eventually chickening out when my wife reported that the bumper was about to scrape the tarmac.

I should imagine some ferry ramps, at times of very low or high tide, can present a risk of cars grounding either their bumpers or else the underside of the car (depending on whether the slope is convex or concave, depending on tide height).

I sometimes start the car with the spare key and then lock the car with my own set while I defrost the outside of the car, lock the house, finish my breakfast etc. I make sure I lock the car using the key rather than the remote, just in case any opportunistic scrotes try using a remote-key scanner. Which reminds me, I need to get a new battery for my car key because the remote locking is getting unreliable.

Goodness knows how the keys got there. You probably couldn't have got them there if you'd *wanted* to ;-) Talking of removing seats takes me back to about 1990 when my VW Golf flooded to a depth of several inches when the pipes that drain the water from the sill at the base of the windscreen got blocked and the "gutters" overflowed into the car. The water quickly smelled appalling, even though I mopped it up with towels as soon as I found it the following morning, so I had to take all the carpets and underfelt out and shampoo and dry it on the line, which involved removing both front seats and a lot of the trim beside the gear-lever. An "interesting" little job :-(

After I suffered a heart attack 8 years ago, my wife couldn't find her keys to unlock the front door to let the ambulance crew in, and eventually remembered my keys in my trouser pocket. I have a vague memory, despite being semi-conscious due to cardiac arrest, surviving only on the CPR she was giving me, of her panicking and me trying to mouth the words "trouser pocket". Now she usually keeps a key in one of the doors in case of emergency.

[NY]

The indicator inside the brake light ring is VW Golf (and maybe other VWs) at its worst. Quite how that got past even the most preliminary safety checks during the design stage is beyond me. Likewise for indicators in the headlamp housing, which applies to almost every car since the 1990s.

Cars with real dials are usually very hard to see at night without the panel lights on (which come on with the side lights) which tends to enforce what you are suggesting. The problem is with cars that have digital displays, because those have to come on even during the day when you won't have your lights on.

How anyone can see to drive at night with the road only illuminated by side or DRL beats me, though for some godforsaken reason it is actually not illegal to drive on side lights only as long as the road is lit by street lights. Both for making myself more visible and for lighting objects from the side as well as from overhead to make hazards more visible, I would never dream of turning my headlights out just because there are street lights, and I use high beam as much as possible as long as it will not dazzle any other vehicle driver (car or bike) - pedestrians who are dazzled have the luxury of being able to close their eyes or look away which someone in charge of a moving vehicle can't do.

[Steve Walker]

I don't mean just within the cover, actually in the headlight itself. I can't think where I have seen those now though.

I'm not up to cars that new ;) I have however driven a number of cars with permanently illuminated dashes and conventional dials. Most of those cars were old enough to use bulbs rather than LEDs and using them all the time seemed to shorten the bulb life. Of course replacement meant removing half the dash!

Yes, I'd agree with that, although I will try not to dazzle pedestrians either, as long as it is safe for me to do so.

I do object though to high-powered, flashing bike lights. The flash attracts your eyes, as they move with the bike, there is no concept of dipped beam and the power can be absolutely dazzling. Even worse are the ones that they mount on their heads, so they see you, look and direct the beam right at your eyes!

SteveW

[Ian Jackson]

In message [e-mail], T i m [e-mail]> writes

It was a long time ago, but a works colleague started having flat battery problems with a Marina. Eventually I had a look, and found that the boot light switch was a rather crude affair - a large microswitch (?) mounted on a flimsy bracket, with a plunger that the boot lid pushed in when it was closed. The bracket had become bent, and the boot lid no longer contacted the plunger.

[Steve Walker]

The old, "How do we know the fridge light goes off when we close the door?"

SteveW

[Ian Jackson]

[Tim+]

In practice nobody leaves their ?parking lights? on all night because in the real world, you rarely know how good your battery capacity is. A ?failing? battery can go on being functional for years if it?s in regular use, not subject to extremes of cold etc., and until it?s stressed you just won?t know it?s capacity.

Leaving parking lights on overnight though is a stress that most folk know might well flatten on old battery so they just don?t do it. When did you last see a car in the middle of the night with parking lights on?

Park it for as short a time as possible or park elsewhere! You rarely

*have* to park somewhere where parking lights are required. If you do have to then hope you have a good battery.

Ah but, most folk will only know that they have a ?proper? battery if the car starts in the morning after leaving parking lights on. Who routinely tests their battery capacity or replaces a battery before it fails?

Leaving parking lights on overnight is a gamble that most motorists with real lifetime experience prefer not to take.

Tim

[NY]

Where we used to live was on a road with a 40 mph speed limit. The council were thinking of reducing it to 30 mph, but the residents decided to leave it at 40 (since they were given the choice) because with a 30 mph limit, cars are allowed to park facing the direction of traffic overnight, whereas in a 40 zone they are not - and we had a lot of problem with the people in the houses on one side of the street parking on the road instead of in the allocated yard at one end of the group of houses; the houses on the opposite side all had their own drives to park on.

I'm not sure whether the parking-with-lights regulation also featured - maybe at 30 they could park without lights, and at 40 they needed lights and no-one would risk leaving their lights on and flatten their battery, which was a blunt instrument to say (effectively) no overnight parking on the road.

[charles]

There must be a 30mph limit if you want to park without lights. In many villages there isn't one.

[Tim+]

You need then in 30mph zones too if you?re parked within 10 metres of a junction (and not in a marked bay).

I?m not arguing about the legality but the reality is that parking lights are very rarely used and I?m willing to bet that *extremely* few people are going to use them overnight. Can?t recall the last time I saw parking lights used by anyone.

Tim

[Brian Reay]

A few years back we lost two sets of keys for two different cars around the same time. We never found them. We are generally extremely careful with keys, I generally know exactly were mine are, as does my wife. When we go away, keys are locked away etc.

To this day we have no real idea what happened to them. Our best guess is they were placed were we put by them to be locked away either just before or just after a trip and they were knocked into a bin nearby.

Either way, it was an expensive experience!