[AT] Little Oli

Dean Vinson dean at vinsonfarm.net
Tue Mar 10 17:11:04 PDT 2015


Tyler, congratulations!    I've always loved those Fleetline tractors and
would be happy for a 77 or 88 to make its way to my place someday also.  And
for you to take over stewardship of your grandfather's tractor is simply
great.

For the non-working lighting system, I'd say just take your time and look
everything over, checking for loose or broken wires.  If there are no
obvious wiring problems, I like to start with a bulb:  Take one out and use
a jumper to (carefully) test it directly against the battery terminals.  If
it doesn't work, that's at least one easy problem to fix.

If the bulb works, use a volt meter to check for voltage between the
terminal at the end of the incoming hot wire in the lamp housing and the
grounded terminal on the battery.   If there's voltage there, you probably
have a ground problem (very common).   Take things apart and wire brush or
scrape or sand them with emery cloth or whatever as needed to remove paint,
gunk, oxidation, etc from the contacting surfaces on the path to ground, and
then put it back together.

If there's no voltage between the hot wire terminal at the lamp housing and
the grounded battery terminal, either there's a wiring problem or a switch
problem or both.  If there's no visually obvious problem with the wires, and
if you can get access to the back of the switch (not sure how to do that on
an Oliver, probably a panel or cover somewhere), check for voltage between
various terminals on the back of the switch and the grounded battery
terminal.  If there's no voltage at the switch, the problem is in the wiring
that's supposed to bring power to the switch.  If there's voltage at the
incoming wire on the switch but not at the outgoing terminals, the problem
is the switch.  If there's voltage at the outgoing terminals, the problem is
the wiring to the lamp housings.

All the best--sounds like fun!

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio




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