Morris Minor Owners Club

As someone trained in mechanics and not the dark art of electrics, I approach wires with trepidation, bullishly confident but wary just the same.
Fitting new front sidelight backing plates is not lets face it a hugely technical job.
Doris is a 65 model with the larger combination side lights and indicators above.
The old foam circular seals had perished and a spray job some years ago left paint traces on the rubber sealing rings , which always looks nasty, and upon removal the passenger side plate was rusty with a pair of holes rotted through.
Fitting the passenger side was a doddle, a good clean up removing the old rubber stuck to the body work, fit the new one with the existing posidrive screws and hey presto, sorted.
Bullet connectors make it fairly straightforward too.
Flushed with success I approached the drivers side, repeated the process and could not get the indicator to work, worse than that the side light was flashing on and off, after much head scratching and fiddling to find a loose connector or incorrect connection and checking the indicator bulb, I ran out of ideas.
Chris Bransby at Tom Roy is my go to for spares and knowledge so I gave him a ring.
" No problem" says he "fit an earth"
It worked, a simple short length of cable from behind the mounting screw to the body and hey presto.
The moral of the story? Don't be afraid to ask, that way we learn.
So, I thought I would share my new found knowledge.
p.s. buy new bulbs, you wont get the old ones out, no way.

Glad you got it sorted.
Electricity is a bit like water; just as water will always find a way to the lowest point, electricity will always try and find a way back to where it comes from. It's the nature of the beast.
The side light flashing was the lack of the direct route back to 'Earth' so it found a way back via the sidelight wiring.
Similar to when you see strange combinations of lights flashing on the back of a car in front. Less common with modern cars and their computer controlled lighting....
Putting a separate earth cable in is bypassing the problem rather than fixing it, but it works, and sometimes has to be done.
Many Lamp fittings are designed to be the Earth path, but some modern replacements require a separate earth cable because they've included plastic parts where the original has metal.

Lamps (bulbs if you wish) will invariably come out; many a time I've twisted the glass 'bulb' off lamp when trying to replace it and had to resort to pliers to twist out the brass base from the fitting.

The sidelights and indicators on my car earth through the screws that attach them to the bodywork......never had a problem with this arrangement, even when fitting replacements........

Which is what happened to the passenger side, the drivers side however...........................
you have been fortunate.

The forum thread "Possible Sort Circuit" [sic!] includes a sketch showing how apparently irrelevant lights can (will!) dimly come on, when a local earth is lost. It refers to the rear light cluster, but the principle is the same for the front cluster.
I'd re-post the drawing here, if I could work out how

mike1864 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 03, 2025 4:20 pm The forum thread "Possible Sort Circuit" [sic!] includes a sketch showing how apparently irrelevant lights can (will!) dimly come on, when a local earth is lost. It refers to the rear light cluster, but the principle is the same for the front cluster.
I'd re-post the drawing here, if I could work out how

What you do is right click on the image you're trying to include, whether from these pages or elsewhere on the web, copy the link and paste to here.

Then you highlight the link and click the Insert Image button that's above the post you're writing, which will add the required 'img' coding.

Like this: .
It will then appear as required....
.
.
.

Thankyou, then you need one of these.