Hi,

I just learned that the driver's side tail light, brake light, and running
light on my 85 Vanagon are not working.  Switching fuses and bulbs from the
good side told me that neither of these things were bad.  All fuses and
bulbs worked fine on the passenger side, just not on the driver's side.
Both turn signals work fine though, as well as all lights up front.

I went thru the archives and found some references to dirty ground wires as
the possible culprit.  I searched all over the van for grounds and cleaned
all I could find with sand paper.  These included the ground cluster under
the coil and the cluster on the engine's left side.  I found another ground
under the van near the sliding door but couldn't get it off.  It's from the
coil-looking object that's mounted under there (what is that thing anyway?)
which is grounded to the frame.

I also found a bunch of grounds above the fuses under the dash.  Two star
cluster gizmos that have 10 or so wires attached via clip-on terminators.
All of these connections looked very clean and I just made sure they were
tight.  I know one of these grounds connected to the headlights, cuz they
wouldn't work when it was disconnected.

None of the grounds I found seemed to affect the tail lights, though.  The
good side continued to work no matter which grounds were disconnected.

Is there another place I can look for the tail light ground?  Is something
else the problem?  I'm getting a little desperate as we're getting ready to
go camping this weekend.  I've done so much recently to prepare for the
trip -- clutch slave, shifter rebuild, heater fix, new tires, parking
brake, etc. -- and now this little glitch is getting the best of me.

Looking for enlightenment,

Marc
85 Vanagon
Atlanta, GA