The purple people eater has some dodgy wiring problems again and it has me gazzumped!

Everything has been fine with the wiring for ages but all of a sudden, the rear lights aren't working (when headlights are on).

The brake lights and indercators are working perfectly and I have checked the bulbs, all good there.

I checked the only known fuses (under the bonnet) and they are both fine. I used my test light and there is no power coming through to the tail lights at all.

The strange thing is that my dash lights are not going on either, I haven't been in behind them to check to see if one of them is blown.. BUT my high beam and red and orange lights work when ignition is turned on or high beams are switched on.

Before I pull apart the dash, is there anything that I have missed? When I drove her in the rain last week, the wipers were slow to turn on (about 4 minutes after I switched the switch) and the green light switchy thing flashed in time to the wipers, so I think something might be amiss there!

I have all this weekend off work, so I'll get stuck into it on Sunday if I can get some pointers before hand?

Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
David

Check your connections at the fuse box, the headlights and parking lights are on different circiuts its always fun with the lord of darkness and old wiring

Jon

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Roundies and Clubbies(except vans) are both ugly that is why I have Midas and a van
1293 Mini Midas Bronze,1275 Clubman van

Cheers Jon, I'll give that a run and see if I can work some mini magic!

The common point here sounds like a connector on the back of your light switch. The rear lights are fed from the parking light circuit.

Engine indicator lights are fed from elsewhere so ignore them.

I come to the conclusion because all your rear lights are not working, and also your dash lights, but your front lights are. This means that there is no problem with the power getting to the light switch. This also rules out the aft loom connector above the wiper motor because the dash lights would work in that case.
All these lights come out after the fuse panel, so the problem is after the fuses. As far as that is concerned there is one wire going to your light switch in the cabin and then it splits at the switch to go to the front headlights or the rest (parkies, dash and back lights.) one wire with power coming in, another going with power to the headlights(via the dimmer switch), and another going to the rest of the lights. The last one is the one you want to check out.



So.....
Check the connectors on the light switch, and while you're there check the light switch contact hasn't failed either. Make sure the parkies are ON THE RIGHT CONNECTOR behind the switch as well, there are a few to choose from.

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

Everthing that Mick has said is correct except old Joseph is a cunning fella, the parklights and instrument light circuit feeds from the switch back to the fuse box before then being sent to parkers and instrument lights, he made all his looms this way for every car he built looms for and even used the same colour coding. The only things that aren't fused are the headlights and ignition. The colour of the wire coming out of the switch should be red with green trace and out of the fuse box a red wire for tail lamps and a red with white trac for dash lights

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Roundies and Clubbies(except vans) are both ugly that is why I have Midas and a van
1293 Mini Midas Bronze,1275 Clubman van