Have you checked the engine compartment fuses ??

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1965 Morris 850
1966 Morris Mini Minor
1967 Morris Cooper 'S'
1977 Leyland LS

Yep, the engine compartment has a few big 30amp fuses, and they are all well.

I've begun following the wires back, to check any grounds or connections. Unfortunately, the main bit of wire that heads back there goes straight behind the fuel tank on the passenger side. Of course, you can't remove the tail light assembly from the outside, and the fuel tank is blocking that too. I checked the harness on the driver side, and as expected there is no voltage.

Is it hard to remove the fuel tank? It looks like removing the rear seat wouldn't get me anywhere....

What could it be?!?

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1998 Rover Mk VII
2001 Honda CBR 929RR (street)
2014 BMW S1000RR (track)

Just a thought mate and I know nothing about the later rover minis but you havent accidently unplugged the rear harness. Just thinking it seems odd you have lost all rear lights

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The best part of fixing your mini is the test drive

Minis..

1976 van daily drive
1975 van
1968 deluxe in the shed
1967 deluxe high strung 1310
1959 austin healey sprite

If it is affecting the indicators as well as the tail lights ,it sounds like you may have disconnected the earths somewhere, have a look at the Earth Distribution diagram

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1965 Morris 850
1966 Morris Mini Minor
1967 Morris Cooper 'S'
1977 Leyland LS

Lindsay Siebler of Minis.com.au - You're a legend.

So I traced the wires from the fuse box across the dash board and into another harness, which then heads under the carpet and towards the rear of the car. I opened up this harness and started testing for voltage. I found all the wires I was looking for and they were all getting 12v - brakes, tail lights, reverse. It must be a problem with the rear harness. Perhaps the sudden voltage was just enough to upset an already bad earth.

I called Lindsay, and he gave me some advice to jimmy the fuel tank out of the way - which wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. Success!! I simply unplugged the harness, cleaned up the leads (which looked a bit corroded) and all is well in my world again.

Now I'd love to jump in to the original job of hooking up my gauges - but at 40 degrees in my garage, I think I'll wait for tomorrow morning. The good news in all of this is that I took on this project to learn something about this stuff. I feel like I've investigated every inch of that system. There's always a bright side I guess.

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1998 Rover Mk VII
2001 Honda CBR 929RR (street)
2014 BMW S1000RR (track)

I'm doing the guages on my SPI now, I can get pictures and explain it to you, if you like.

I've done it!

I mostly "tapped into" other wires to power the various gauges, which doesn't seem like the perfect solution, but adding fuses to the fuse box and such seemed like overkill. Plus, every wire that I touched I did properly, with bullet connectors, male / female spade connectors & heat shrink wrap. For the lights I just tapped into the wire for the dashboard lights (I couldn't find one for the A/C controls). For the volt meter, I did use the old A/C connector which was on the Ignition circuit, and for the clock I tapped into the radio memory wire. I ran all the grounds in parallel to the same earth the radio was using, and this seems to be working just fine.

I finished up quite early last night, so I spent a solid hour just cleaning up the wiring, wrapping and bundling the cables in a logical manner, and everything behind the dash is so much more manageable. I'm quite proud of myself for taking on this little project, and even if I maybe should have introduced new fuses, I don't think my solution was a "hack" by any means. And as I mentioned before, I definitely feel like I know the electrical system inside and out now, so these projects won't be so daunting in the future. I'll try and grab a few pics tonight and post them up. Thanks for everyone's help. I wouldn't have started into this if it weren't for the info posted by you awesome BMC'ers.

Go Mini Go!!

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1998 Rover Mk VII
2001 Honda CBR 929RR (street)
2014 BMW S1000RR (track)