Tail light harness socket problems

[green69rt]

Just putting this up because it gave me a problem for a while.

I bought all M&H harnesses for my rebuild.  Pretty good stuff, it just took some work to make sure I got everything and hooked up correctly. Problem I had was with the tail lights(the lights that are a combo of brake, turn and tail light.)

Ran the cables, pushed the bulbs into the sockets.  Plugged the sockets into the tail light housings.  Then all hell broke loose!  Tried turning them on, some were abnormally bright, some dim.  Tried turn signals and the dash started flashing, stepped on the brake and the fuse blew.  WTF!!

So took a socket out of the housing and one of the filaments was burnt out.  Pulled the bulb and some black plastic crumbs fell out.  Looked inside and I could see that there was a black plastic bushing that holds the contacts.

Pic #1 shows the bushing I'm talking about and the spring that you push against to seat the bulb.
Pic #2 shows a good bushing and one of the bad ones I took out.   Some were worst than what I show.  The broken ones let the contacts drift around in the socket and touch the barrel (ground, blowing fuse) and some touched each other causing weird problems.

So I go to the local auto parts and buy a set of generic sockets.  Not much better, you need to be careful how you push that bulb in.

Pic #3 shows a look down inside the generic socket. 
Pic #4 shows the potential problem/  If the wire contact is not seated nicely on the end of the spring and you push the bulb in the contact may bend over, or the spring bend over, and touch other stuff.  There isn't much clearance inside that socket so easy to do.  Then it's back to trouble shooting time.

I ended up calling M&H and they sent me 4 new socket assemblies and told me that they got a bad batch of bushings in and I must have got some of the bad ones.  The new ones worked fine.

[john108]

I found it difficult putting in the bulbs.
I wound up pulling back on the wires to remove most of the spring force of the contacts on the bulbs.
But I haven't tested anything yet.

[b5blue]

I recall it being a bit stiff assembling also. I used Caig D-100 to lube and protect all contact points. 

[Mopar Nut]

I ended up calling M&H and they sent me 4 new socket assemblies and told me that they got a bad batch of bushings in and I must have got some of the bad ones.  The new ones worked fine.

Can you post pictures of the new ones?

[green69rt]

I ended up calling M&H and they sent me 4 new socket assemblies and told me that they got a bad batch of bushings in and I must have got some of the bad ones.  The new ones worked fine.

Can you post pictures of the new ones?

The new ones look just like the old black ones, just not broken. second pic, bottom.