Wayward ‘Earth’ wire and rear compartment interior light has ‘two’ power inputs but no ground. 🤔

Hello Folks

Still finishing off the Freelander ‘SAGA’(I started this project as a younger man/Now ‘SAGA is more appropriate than ever/getting older etc) and have a question conundrum or ten.

First two.. whilst refitting the rear interior panel in the ‘boot’ I have ‘discovered’ that the rear offside panel light has two wires.. purple and purple and white.. concerned that’s I might blow myself up I tested for power and ground at the two wire terminals and found… both have power coming from them(using a test light) How odd I thought? Is this normal… I believe looking at the Haynes circuit that the earth for this area is on the central locking ‘doodad’… I hate electricity.. and confusing electicktrickery circuit ‘diabolograms!!!’

Any advice would be cool.

Also.. and I have to slap myself hard for this.. in the offside wheel arch towards the rear there is a black wire with a female spade connector on it. It enters the arch from the rear of the car directly below the filler nozzle. I specifically recall thinking ‘I will easily remember where that goes…!’

Obviously I now can’t.. can anyone suggest as to where that should connect? It’s not the fuel pump earth thingy.

Have been looking up to the back of the filler nozzle but can’t see if that’s where it went.

At the time it seemed and obvious location..

Will be back up the garage later this afternoon. Steering column replacement this time around. One of the failure points and the ‘easier’(I hope) major defect to fix.

TIA

Malcolm

PS Photos looking from under the rear of the car and up behind where the rear of the wheel arch liner is located. I wonder if this is an earth for the interior light?

Another photo

Purple wires are interior lights. Purple is permanently live. Purple/white is probably be switched live. This is going from memory though.

Nodge68 said:

Purple wires are interior lights. Purple is permanently live. Purple/white is probably be switched live. This is going from memory though.

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Obviously the door was open so makes sense…

Can be confusing, as Nodge says, one is permanently live but the other is fed from the CCU and becomes grounded for the lamp to come on and goes to 12V when off as the switch in the CCU is a solid state switch. There is no separate ground wire on the luggage compartment lamp. From memory the lamp goes out after about 15mins of door open - can also confuse testing for a fault !

andyfreelandy said:

Can be confusing, as Nodge says, one is permanently live but the other is fed from the CCU and becomes grounded for the lamp to come on and goes to 12V when off as the switch in the CCU is a solid state switch. There is no separate ground wire on the luggage compartment lamp. From memory the lamp goes out after about 15mins of door open - can also confuse testing for a fault !

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In the past I always assumed turning things on required switching the positive.
It's gradually sinking into my thick skull that sometimes it's the negative that is switched.
Previous posts from you helped me to realise this so thank you.

Alibro said:

In the past I always assumed turning things on required switching the positive.
It's gradually sinking into my thick skull that sometimes it's the negative that is switched.
Previous posts from you helped me to realise this so thank you.

Click to expand...

Lots of car things are negative switch Ali. The interior lights are the obvious one, where traditional door switch were in the frame, and pulled one side of the bulb to ground, while the other side was live. The ignition system in a points based setup is another, where the coil is pulled to ground in pulses via the distributor. On modern vehicles many actuators are pulled to ground, and many sensors return signals reference to ground. This is done for safety, as a wire going to ground by accident is less likely to start a fire, than a wire which is live.

Not familiar with the FL1 so wonder if the wire behind the filler could be for locking cap ?
Or is there a filter nearby, could be Water in Fuel warning wire ?