kluczenk

I was able to diagnose a brake light issue and isolated it down to some frayed wires right at the connector (pig tail). I clipped the wire and pulled out the pig tail to take a closer look. As the pig tail looks original and in fairly good condition I was hoping to salvage it and simply splice in new wire. The issue is that I can't seem to find any way to remove the existing wire and put in fresh stuff. Does anyone know if there's a way to remove the existing wire? When I depress the springs there's still some good wire in there but I was hoping to start with fresh stuff.

Pilot Dan

Problem is the old wire is crimped to the metal contact and you need to re-use the contact. If you can, fully depress the contact and try to get about 1/2 inch of good wire to stick out, solder a new wire to that, and finish the repair with a piece of heat shrink tubing. Otherwise, get a donor connector from someone who has replaced that harness. Pilot Dan

toms silver 60

If your wiring is original you should consider getting a new rear harness. However, there is a good article in auto enthusiast magazine this month which covers making light socket connectors with pictures.

AZDoug

Those tail light plugs/pigtails *used* to be available off the shelf in any auto parts store. back about 1975, i simply replaced those and spliced them into the old wiring, which worked fine until i finally replaced the whole tail light harness a few years ago.

Entire tail harness replacing means removing the sill plates,and steel reinforcements under the carpet by the sill plates, which also means removing the seats (you will probably want to replace both rusted out steel reinforcements with new stainless ones) and drivers side kickpanel.

Doug

Donald #31176

58-62 tailight pigtails are still available thru some venders like Mary Jo. They dont look like the originals ( white plastic w. yellow & black wires) but they re new.

kluczenk

Thanks guys, I'll try my hand at a repair and then just buy some replacements if I can't splice in some new wire.

Frankie the Fink

You're "cheaping out" and creating problems for yourself later on with a 1/2 @ss repair...every time I try to Bubba something like that it comes back to haunt me. Got get a pigtail for the car put it in the way its supposed to be and you won't have to screw with it again.....