No spark vx

[chrisc]

My vx hpe was sitting outside (i know!) for a week or 2 following a cv joint problem and of course it had to rain continuously for the whole time. When I came to try and start it its cranking but no spark. My only clue is that I recently replaced the ignition amplifier and it exhibited the same problem after that, but I cleaned up the earth for it and that seemed to resolve it. Ive run an additional wire from the amp earth to the evil spider headlight earths to see if that helps but still having the same problem. Anybody have any useful hints / tests for function of rest of ignition system?

oh, and following its sitting out in the rain ive had it in a garage for the past 3 or 4 days to try and dry it out.

[chrisc]

Solved. After much mucking about under the bonnet I noticed that the interior light wasnt coming on when I opened the drivers door. Oh darn (edited) I thought, another thing to fix. But then I remembered I was dealing with an italian car, so set about fixing the light. Fixed that (earthing again!), and presto. car works.

[Shant Fabricatorian]

Er, right...

Speaking of electrical gremlins, my car has recently taken to having the right-hand side dipped beam headlamp unit adopt a fainter glow than the left-hand side unit. I've seen it on other cars as well but I've never been quite sure what causes it. One side has a 'normal' yellow glow, but the fainter side is orangey, if you get my meaning.

On this occasion, though, there are some weird symptoms, because turning the foggies on (integrated unit with the outside dipped-beam light) leaves a car with full glow on the left-hand side, and no lighting at all on the right - a bit odd considering they have separate earths. Went and cleaned every earthing in sight, but no luck this time. I suspected it might have something to do with the considerable amounts of rain we've had here recently (water getting inside the bulb, as is its wont) but it's dried out now and still no luck. It's coming up for rego soonish so any ideas on potential fixes appreciated. Still can't work out why the two sides should be connected in that manner though.

[chrisc]

Ive seen numerous bodges where headlights have been wired together after one side packed up for one reason or another, although this would have been fairly obvious I should imagine. Fuses? :) Permanent fix has been completed on my car following the discovery that the earthing problem was actually due to a speaker grounding out right next to it. Insulated the speaker properly and problems solved and the stereo sounds better!