Blinker question

My 70 B came courtsey from the DPO with all lights unhooked, I'm in the process of hooking everything back up. The wiring section of this site has been a BIG help.

However...

My right rear blinker has two wires, one green, one brown. It seems to flash OK without the brown wire hooked up. The left flasher does not have a corresponding brown wire. Do you know what the brown wire is for? Is it an additional ground? Do I have a later model lamp housing? It's a single filament lamp, what gives?

I will tell you that it is not a ground!! Grounds are black. Do you think that somebody switched the light?? What does the wiring diagam show?? Good luck man!!

The wiring diagram on this site and the ones in the haynes manual show one green wire, so I'm temped to snip it off. But I thought I would ask first.

John, I'd pull the fixture out, not hard to do, and find out what and how that brown wire is hooked up. Then you can remove it completely if you want to.

I never cut off any wire. I fold them back tape them into the bundle just in case I should ever need them.

At no time did MG have a brown wire any where in the rear of the car. Brown is a constant hot circuit. It sounds like some one has replaced the bulb socket in that light assm. There is no need for it so cut it off. If it is a replacement socket it probably was suppose to be used as a ground. MG gets it's ground through the body of the light assm.

I haven't looked at anything before this answer, but suppose that it is a dirty faded red?

As Tom said, Brown is supposed to be always hot. If at all possible without destroying anything, I would follow that wire back to find out where it comes from. Check it with a meter. Hot? DPO added ground using the wrong colour?

The Brown wire is connected to the bulb housing and nothing else, I am going to take it apart and see what I can find out. Most likely the bulb housing has been rebuilt. I took out the bulb and could tell it was for a single filament housing. I will let you know what I find.

I just peeled back the rubber boot on the lamp housing. I found that the brown wire had been poorly soldiered (SP?) to the housing. Looks like someone had added an extra ground. Snip, Snip, it's gone!

Thanks for the help!

That's the way to do it. I never like to cut wires off that aren't used anymore. I like to remove them completely so they can't bite you later. Plus, I would want to know what the DPO was thinking when he put it on.

I would imagine he thought the light wouldn't work without a ground so he fixed it. I had a shop once do some brake work on a customers car. Well it ended up at my shop Viva a tow truck from that shop. Upon investigating I found the shop had reversed the rear backing plates to get the rear wheel cyl on top which put the bleed screw over the hard line to make it bleed better. Most cars do have the bleed screw over the hard line so that the air will come out better. However thats not the way MG chose to design theirs. In doing that he had to bend the hard lines up to reach the wheel cyl., and it put the tilt of the shoes the wrong way. Needless to say the job had to be done over. Afetr calling the shop and telling them what I had to do they refunded the customers money. He got a master cyl., wheel cyl, front pads, and shoes free. The owner of the shop said that was the last MG that he would ever work on. Sense then he has sent me customers.

The shop owner did the right thing by sending the MG stuff to you. If you don't know what you're doing find someone who does.
I fixed a telemetry unit out at Folly Beach today that an electrican had been into. He hooked the backup battery backwards and burnt a trace off the board. I keep telling my client to not let this guy near that equipment but they don't pay attention. Well, they bought some parts for the Magnette today.....