Thread: Car boot light
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Andrew Gabriel Andrew Gabriel is offline
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Default Car boot light

In article ,
Harry Bloomfield writes:
Matty F wrote :
I took the bulb holder apart and found a mercury switch inside. The
mercury was coated in oxide. I took the mercury out and cleaned it and
cleaned its container. The switch worked perfectly after that.


A mercury switch - that would make it a very long time ago :-)


Many years ago, my father had a Citroen GS which had a mercury
switch for the boot light. Being sealed, they are normally very
reliable. Sounds like Matty's one wasn't sealed.

With regards to more recent cars, I've had the both the light
switch fail high resistance due to dirt ingress, and the earthing
of the boot hatch go high resistance through its hinges (which
stopped the rear window heater and rear wiper from working).
In the latter case, I connected an explicit earth tail between
the hatch and the car bodywork, and that was still working fine
when I sold the car ~5 years later.

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Andrew Gabriel
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