# How are taillight housings grounded?



## Reb (Aug 5, 2013)

Prior to disassembly of my car, we observed poor performance from the lights. The taillights in particular were very dim. It was clear that the underhood ground wires were in poor condition, so a set were ordered and installed along with the rest of the work on that part of the car. 

We are now tracing out all wiring, as it was a bit of a mess. We now have nice, strong 12v to the taillights & brake lights, although new (GTO) taillight assemblies have not yet been purchased or installed. Question: How are the rear lights grounded? Their housings are plastic, and we see no ground wires/terminals coming off of the wiring harness in the rear of the car. 

Everyone on this site has been so helpful! Thank you all so very much for helping us along with my car!


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## WDMelvin (Jun 23, 2014)

I see you have a 67 Le Mans/GTO clone so I assume that is what you are referring to. I'm not sure you have GTO taillights or not but on the Le Mans lights, the portion of the assembly that light sockets snap into are metal, at least on mine they are. Inside the trunk there is a metal bracket that holds the housings in from inside and gets bolted to the 3 studs from the housing sandwiching the assembly in the car. The ground path should be from the light socket, to the housing, through the studs to the bracket and the final path is from the bracket to thr trunk floor if I understand it correctly.


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## WDMelvin (Jun 23, 2014)

If I am correct I would think you should clean up the contact area where the 3 nuts contact the bracket and the top and bottom of the bracket where it contacts the trunk floor.


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## WDMelvin (Jun 23, 2014)

Sorry, I nust noticed you stated you had GTO taillights. On my 69 there was a separate unshielded ground that ran across all 3 sockets. It basically clipped on the plastic housing and contacted the ground portion of the light socket.


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## geeteeohguy (Feb 2, 2008)

GTO's have pot metal tail lamp housings, not metal. At least original ones are metal. They ground through the housing, poorly. You can upgrade to a later style 3-wire socket and the third wire is actually a ground wire you can screw to ground for better performance. The original sockets loose tension and corrode and wear over the decades, giving marginal performance.


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## geeteeohguy (Feb 2, 2008)

I meant 'not plastic'. In too much of a hurry (again)


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