Use dielectric grease on your taillight bulb sockets

[runningallday]

Anybody else having problems with taillights winking in and out? Mine are all corroded.

 

[JB05]

My right side light went out; can't remember which one. The LED bulb fell apart upon removal due to corrosion. I managed to clean out the rust, but I don't think I used any grease. Maybe I did.

 

[Tdijarhead]

Common MK4 problem, if the assembly is in really bad rusted condition, look for a replacement in your local junkyard 99.5-05.5 will work gas or diesel.
Otherwise tighten up the sockets and use some electrical cleaner/grease.

 

[Nero Morg]

I usually just wire brush them and then they work fine again.

 

[runningallday]

I usually just wire brush them and then they work fine again.

ill try this too, thanks

 

[dave mc]

my right rear had a dead spider in it and the cockpit right turn signal clicked really fast until i removed the dead bug!

 

[runningallday]

my right rear had a dead spider in it and the cockpit right turn signal clicked really fast until i removed the dead bug!

for real? lol i dont know of a reasonable explanation for that. sounds like a bad connection?

 

[vandermic07]

Check to make sure the sheet metal that holds the bulb is still connected to the plastic housing. I was having issues with my brake/running light not working all the time. The plastic "Rivet"/"spot weld" was broken and the sheet metal was bending out, losing contact with one of the spring pins below. So only the brake light would work, not both.

 

[dave mc]

Glad you enjoyed the spider in the taillight socket! It was a true mystery that that spider bugged my bug. The worst one was when I took off on a cross country in my A7E Corsair ll many years ago and had to declare an emergency landing for a failure in the cockpit airspeed indicator. Descending from 30K feet, the maintenance folks found that one of my ground crew had forgotten to remove the gray tape that covered the static so and the washing fluid in that line froze up @33K feet and killed the signal to the airspeed indicator. Just a tad more dangerous...

 

[runningallday]

Glad you enjoyed the spider in the taillight socket! It was a true mystery that that spider bugged my bug. The worst one was when I took off on a cross country in my A7E Corsair ll many years ago and had to declare an emergency landing for a failure in the cockpit airspeed indicator. Descending from 30K feet, the maintenance folks found that one of my ground crew had forgotten to remove the gray tape that covered the static so and the washing fluid in that line froze up @33K feet and killed the signal to the airspeed indicator. Just a tad more dangerous...

whoa. i googled a7e corsair and it looks really cool. perhaps just slightly more involved than a volkswagen?

so the maintenance people screwed up? that's gotta be pretty rare for something that flies, since their standards need to be high or your story would be a weekly thing. yikes!

 

[dave mc]

@runningallday Yes at first I thought I had hypoxia or bad O2 then it came to me to check my air data computer and viola it said I was at 442 knots groundspeed where the a/s indicator barely fluttered above 80 knots indicated so I felt relieved and used my angle of attack indicator on final approach. I guess several years of training probably helped too. The Corsair was a good bird, but my alltime fave was the A-4 skyhawk which rolled at a bang your helmet 720 degrees per second

 

[runningallday]

@runningallday Yes at first I thought I had hypoxia or bad O2 then it came to me to check my air data computer and viola it said I was at 442 knots groundspeed where the a/s indicator barely fluttered above 80 knots indicated so I felt relieved and used my angle of attack indicator on final approach. I guess several years of training probably helped too. The Corsair was a good bird, but my alltime fave was the A-4 skyhawk which rolled at a bang your helmet 720 degrees per second

That is awesome. Lol what a surreal experience