Go to put the X into reverse to turn the key off. With the car off, the trans in reverse and my foot on the brake, the GEN light is on. Only comes on when the shifter makes the column hit its "stop". If you kinda move the shifter slightly, the light turns off. And only when your foots on the brake! I disconnect the directionals and the issue goes away. Im gonna try hitting the parts dept for a good used switch and just plug it in under the dash and see. Curious to see why a mechanical movement of the column and shifter would make a light come on. Unless there is a chaffed wire maybe? Now its gonna kill me all day until I come back home and rip it apart!
Ok, I narrowed it down after unplugging/ disconnecting things. It's in the tail light harness. I plug a known good harness in and everything is fine. So there's something wonky with the one in there. Tomorrow's project is to swap it out. I'm going to try and figure out what's up with the original. Bad socket, bad ground? At least I figured it out. Now to put the car back together!
Everytime I've fixed a wierdo "how the hell can this be?" electrical problem like that, it's always been a ground issue.
In my experience (very non Buick), with cars, trucks, trailers, equipment, it’s almost always the ground. Only to be out done by boats, where it’s always the ground (no chassis).
I searched for what seemed like years before I found my ground issue. Had an answer almost instantly from this board.
Since all electricicles use the body, frame, bumpers, chassis or "anything the rust like to eat" as the common path to one side of the battery, and almost everything has power, that is interrupted by a switch in the closed position to function*, anytime any ground is interrupted, the current will seek path through the other areas of the wiring and create "another switch" condition in the process. This makes for some very un-fuuny "jokes on you" games by yer car. *name one head scratcher item, that is not negative ground, but positive grounded on the car...
I may be reading this out of context, but fuel injectors , at least factory GM, have constant 12v with ignition on and the ecm supplies the ground to fire the injector.
Winner. Yep, the power is to the bulb outer base (cap), and the ground is made through the bulb's contact. (for those using LED, it needs to be bridge rectified type to work)
That is exactly what came to mind! I put a small LED light panel in the glove compartment that works off the switch. I used a bulb adapter and just had to reverse the wires to the light panel to make it work.
