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1953 GMC 1/2 ton 12 volt question.
Just installed new wiring harness and noticed that I only have one brake light on the passenger-rear. The driver side light only has the taillight. Both lights have turnsignal lights. There are two bulbs in each side (light housing. My question is since these are the original/repro (glass type lenses) is that the way they were oringinally,one light for brake and the other for tail? If not is there a way to wire it so you get both the brake and tail on both lights?

John

John Clark,

I don't know how the truck was wired from the factory. If you want brake light and turn signals on the back you will need either a double filament lamp on each side, OR, two single filament lamps on each side.

Without special gizmo's, each function...brake, and tail need their own dedicated filament. So this can be one lamp with two filaments, OR two lamps with one filament each. If you aren't totally confused yet, I can try again.


Stuart

Stuart,
Let me clarify. I have two lamps/bulbs on each side, single filaments. One wire/bulb on each side works the turn signals and then one bulb/wire on drivers side runs the tail lamp and the passenger side light runs the stop light. Can the turn signal be wired together with the stop lamp light(each side)if I put a double filament socket with two wires? Sorry for the confusion... Been working on finshing up a bunch of things on the truck..long day.

John

John,

I still might not understand it. I made a little sketch which helped. This must be an old rig with a basic turn signal device in the cab. I don't think you can achieve what you want without changing the turn signal switch.

The setup you have might be a four wire turn signal unit. This unit is not sophisticated enough to combine stop with turn which is what I think you want to do.

You have all the hardware on the back of the truck to rig it up in a conventional manner...all that is missing is a newer turn signal unit. Unless you want to keep some originality with your existing unit, changing to the more modern one would be the best move.

If I drew the sketch properly as I interpreted your layout, I would think this sort of dangerous lighting arrangement.

Do I understand all I think I do!!

Stuart

John,

DUH, you noted it is a '53...I missed that. The turn signal unit should be capable of doing what you want, but as you describe it, it sure isn't wired properly. Could someone have hooked it up wrong? It should have 8 or 9 wires coming out of the unit.

I don't know if GMC had a factory turn signal device installed under the steering wheel integral with the column.

Stuart

John I can only answer for the 41 I am working on. But your discription is just like a 41 tail lamp except the 41 only had 1 tail lamp. Each lamp has 2 single element bulbs if I am reading you correctly. If that is so then yes one bulb for park and one for stop. You will either need to install exter lamps for turn signals or do what I am doing and install an adaptor (used for hooking up trailor lamps on vehicles with seperate turn ann stop lamps). Go back in the electrical posts to a post I made on this subject and look at my diagram.

My assumption is that you have a truck that had no turn signals from the factory. If I am wrong then forget my previous post.

Thanks to all for your comments. I have the original glass tail lamps with two sockets each. One socket(single element) handles the aftermarket turnsignals. The other socket I replaced with a dual element. The wiring harness only carried one wire for brakes and one for tail lights and there were two wires one for each side for turn signals and that was never a problem. So I ran a wire from one side to the other to bring over the other tail lamp signal and the brake light. All works perfect and the only issue I have is the bulbs are a little larger/longer than the tail light housing can accomodate so I had to do a little adjustment. The other porblem was the bulbs they sent were 6 volt and lasted about 10 seconds.

Thanks to all for comments.

if you have factory turn signals you have to wire thru it for brakes,,if not just wire both sides as the left is wired...doc