Headlights, Brake lights, Road Lamps

[Duff]

Now that my car's started i'm getting all the electronics in order and I have a few gremlins to workout.  The first one I fixed was that my brights didn't work.  I was able to rewire and solder connections to the foot switch and then my brights worked, but I still can't get my road lamps to work. 

I have a yellow wire in the kickpanel/footswitch area that routes to the road lamp relay and i've soldered it to the red wire of the footswitch as per the wiring diagram in the 71 manual and I still can't get the road lamps to work.  I continuity checked all road lamp wiring and it's fine.  I also put power directly to the lights and they both lit up.  I do have a bad panel dimmer in the car that I need fixed, but i'm not sure that this will or won't solve the problem.  Could I possibly need a new road lamp relay? 

Next up, when I don't have my headlights on, my rear brake lights, turn signals, etc all function correctly, but when I turn the headlights on, my rear brake lights stop functioning as to my turn signals in the rear.  In other words, I have no running lights in the rear when my headlights are on, and the turn signals don't function.  I'm not sure what to do here...

 

[Chryco Psycho]

Can you hear or feel the relay switching , can you test for power out of the relay or jump power to the wire for the Road lights & make sure the rest of the wiring is working from the relay to the lights , if the lights work from the relay out the relay is bad if not there are other problems such as good grounds  . The dimmer has nothing to do with the road lamps BTW .
The headlights / brake lights are probably a bad ground at the rear lights so with the headlights off the tailights ground through the headlight / parklight circuit , with the headlights on there is no available ground preventing the turn / brake lights from working so you need to add a ground wire from the light housings or scrape away some paint so the housing can ground to the body , you may also have to stake the light socket in the housing as often the corrosion can get between the socket & housing .

[dodj]

  Headlights/tail lights are probably a ground issue. The headlight harness has a ground wire to the rad support if i remember right.

[Duff]

Awesome info!  Thanks!!  I actually don't have the tail light housings fully tightened down so I bet that's the problem.

As for the relay I don't hear anything from it.  I'll try putting power to the lights from that point and see how that works, then post back here