Greetings. I am working a crash in which a 1991 Buick LeSabre was struck in the rear by a heavy truck. The car was disabled on the roadway with hazard lights in operation according to witnesses. The car was incinerated except for the R tail light assembly. One bulb in the assembly clearly shows hot-shock. Short of finding an exemplar 1991 Buick LeSabre, is there a bible out there that identifies various light bulb function locations for vehicles so that I can prove/disprove that my hot-shock bulb location was for the hazard light? Thanks, SgtSteve
You could try elimination. Checking a manual (ebay if all else fails), are all the rear bulbs the same fitment shape, single filament, wattage to your recovered lamp. Do you know where in the lamp cluster that lamp was recovered so as to possibly eliminate reverse/rear fog - that alone could reduce it from 1:4 to 1:2. I'm sure you have considered it, a trawl of the local shopping car parks to find an exemplar is often a good use of time/effort.
Be sure the bulb was within two to three feet of actual contact points between the collision vehicles. That filament could have been deformed in a previous collision and the bulb never replaced...
But it would have to have been some heck of a previous impact - deformation does not readily occur from small taps in car parks or low speed shunts even if the lamp was within a couple of feet of impact. It takes a serious bit of rigging to replicate a deformed filament in tests.
-- Edited by BlueB on Monday 21st of February 2011 11:09:25 AM
I guess if things were easy we wouldn't be needed as experts. Too bad there is no bible for lamp ID. According to the Sylvania parts listing the stop, signal, hazard bulb is the only two-filament bulb back there. Impact was within 3-feet and was severe enough to shove the rear frame to the rear of the driver's seat back. Thanks so much for all the help and advise. Blue B that process of elimination was the saving grace.
