At 08:18 PM 9/24/2012, Stuart MacMillan wrote:
>I just had an experience where the left rear tail light and the right front
>parking light went out.  No voltage.  The wiring diagram was completely
>wrong, and finally I found the spade connector had fallen off the fuse
>panel, which is what I should have seen right away. The wiring diagram
>doesn't show this circuit coming off the fuse panel, but off a different
>light circuit.

All years with the old panel (pre '86) show left side front, tail,
side marker lights fed from S1; right side front, tail, side, plus
license plate lights fed from S2.

Front markers come directly from the fuse.  Side markers are vampired
off the tail lights, double wire at the taillight connector pin.

Taillight '82 and previous (and according to the diagram, '83
aircooled), both sides fed from second spade terminal at load end of
panel fuse through four-pin connector connector T4b (along with
alternator D+ and maybe something else) located at fuse/relay panel.

Taillight '83 and subsequent fed from second spade terminal at load
end of panel fuse through pins 5 and 6 of seven pin connector T7 in
wiring connector box in the engine room.  The connection through T7
pins 5 and 6 persisted through the end of Vanagon production.

(All above from July 1991 edition of Bentley)

Now looking at that, I have to wonder about the location of T4b on
the earlier diagrams.  Evidence from the D+ line suggests that it's
probably actually located in the wiring connector box, in which case
the change to T7 in the same location makes sense in terms of not
drastically rearranging the wiring harness.  But that doesn't affect your year.

If your wiring was actually significantly different from that, I
suspect the DPO had made some changes.  If you fixed both left and
right sides by putting one terminal back on the fuse/relay panel,
then without question he did.

Yrs,
d