I had a few minutes between errands to jack the car up and look. Found a
loose connection on one of the pair. Fixed that, no dice. Got out
voltmeter, knob broke. Grabbed another one. Looked for continuity between
the blades of the switch and found none. Looked for 12v from either of the
wires and found none. Looked for a bad fuse and found none.

All this with the stick in reverse and the switch on, engine not running.

Jim

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Alistair Bell <albell@shaw.ca> wrote:

> the switches fail.  Sometimes it is just the connection to the switch that
> are bad.
>
> around 5 - 8 bucks for new switch and it is an easy access repair, you get
> to lie down for a while :)
>
> alistair
>
>
>
> On 2013-09-27, at 8:01 AM, Jim Felder wrote:
>
> > Neither of the backup lights on my 83 five-speed 2wd is working. I had a
> > chance to pull the bulb out of the drivers side tail light and it tested
> > good.
> >
> > Do these switches ever fail? I will get a chance sunday to check out the
> > wiring, but worrying in advance about a thing I have never even thought
> > about before, which is how the backup light switch works.
> >
> > Jim
>
>