I have a switch in my car called "fog lights" and I have fog lights on the front of my 1988 conversion van. The lights don't come on when I flick the switch.

Today, I went about resolving this problem and found that my fog lights were customly soldered to what looked like an ecm computer - which is just a small circuit board with tons of wires connecting into it in the engine bay. I have another ecm located near the driver door in the van, and I'm not really sure what the secondary circuit board in the engine bay does - I can't find any references. It has a switch on it and my only thought was it could be related to a trailer connection - but have no idea really.

Anyway, I cut the wire from my fog lights connected to the circuit board and ended up finding the wire from the switch - which was not connected to anything. When I connected the two wires together my fog light switch worked.

My question is. What on earth would someone have been thinking to wire my fog lights to this secondary circuit board and what could it be?

The ECM was connected to a radar detector that has since been removed, that combined with the other ECM that was connected to a police scanner, turned off the Wnker lights when a cop car was in the vicinity so as to avoid the driver being fined for having her fog lights on when there was no fog.

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kk said..
The ECM was connected to a radar detector that has since been removed, that combined with the other ECM that was connected to a police scanner, turned off the Wnker lights when a cop car was in the vicinity so as to avoid the driver being fined for having her fog lights on when there was no fog.

Quite a plausible answer. The ecm in the engine bay does look aftermarket. I haven't managed to trace where all the wires coming out if it go. However, in the 80's they had their priorities right. My van has 8 cup holders, 5 ashtrays, two cigarette lighters and an analogue tv. It's an apartment on wheels.

That things a beast. I always wanted a van but have yet to own one.

Vandura is pretty cool name.

I can imagine if some bloke who's wife is russian just bought this beauty and pulling into a driveway:

Wife: What iz zees ?

Hubby: VAN, dura !

("dura" means "silly woman" in russian)

Your van is an absolute animal. You should be proud

I bought it as a surf/weekender van about six months ago as I have little use for my regular drive now. So far this van is probably up there with the best purchases I've ever made. Took me four years to find it. Problem is that I don't go to the surf as much as I used to as I'm totally fascinated with it. Spend my free time working on making it work better for me in some way. Find it hard to contain my enthusiasm for it.

They come up on ebay/gumtree/carsales occasionally for 6K - 30K mark. I've never seen two that are alike. I paid 12K for my Starcraft conversion van. The van culture was huge in the U.S. in the 70s - 80's.

www.v8van.com/

Is it really left hand drive?

If its a US spec van, what do they use for the indicators? Flashing red or amber?

I never understood why the US has cars where the indicators are flashing red.

It's left hand drive, which I haven't found to be a problem, unless overtaking, but you still sit quite high. However, overtaking is a rare thing, even with a 350 V8 the van is a slug when it comes to acceleration - so much wood and metal to heave around. Downhill you can get some momentum going though.

When the indicators are on. The front parking lights flash amber with a higher intensity as do the front side signal lights. The red tail lights which also double as parking/brake lights also flash with a higher intensity.

It's all perfectly safe - even the drum brakes stop the thing.

In the good old days fog lights could only used to come on when the headlights were on dipped.

You would figure if this was the case they would just be plugged via a relay into the headlight dipped circuit, but these days everything is computer controlled so maybe that is what it is for ?

As explained many years ago to me by a bloke who used to handle ADR compliance stuff for generous motors at Lang-Lang proving grounds,
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Fog lights are mounted at low level - and focussed so that the light stays close to the road surface as they can shine UNDER the fog, and therefore minimise any light being reflected back at you.

When fog lights are being used - your regular headlights are not supposed to be used as they will cause light to be reflected back at you when it hits the airborne water droplets.
Driving in fog - with fog lights is intended to be at much lower speeds than normal. [drive to suit the conditions]


I vaguely recall that many [European] cars had a high intensity rear light on the drivers side, seemingly so following traffic could hit you more precisely.


stephen