Lude Generation

One of my rear lights has gone out, near-side rear tail light, innermost light, tail light only, not stop/tail. So I swapped the bulb, no joy. Then I put a meter on the bulb socket, nothing, and nothing on the loom side that connects to the light pigtail.
Checked all the fuses I could find that seemed remotely lighting related, all good. The other side, offside, is fine, as are the other lights on the nearside cluster.

Obviously I could trace the wires back to see if I can find a break, but can anyone please suggest anything else that could be causing this?

Cheers.

Bad earth?

Paul is saying no +ve at the cluster, so that rules earth out as the problem though (plus iirc the earth is common for all the bulbs in the cluster)?

Where did you test for +ve Paul? At the contact for the bulb, or at the connector from the loom to the cluster?

The loom runs down the passenger side of the car (so nearside) and then across the rear of the boot (between the lip and the spare wheel well) to the drivers/off side. So it's odd that no feed on the nearside but there is on the off side - would expect it to be the other way around.
I can't recall if the splice between near/offside taillight is done at the nearside cluster connector, or within the loom, but either way, I'm sure it's all in the section within the boot.
Think the service manual shows where it is (mixture of in the wiring schematic and the wiring/loom diagrams)

Tested the loom end and got no +ve there. I stopped looking at that point and haven't had chance to take another look. Many thanks for the info, I'll take a close look at the loom this weekend. I did transport some fence posts recently and considering where you've said the wiring crosses over I wonder if I've damaged the wiring there.
Will report back

Thanks for the help with this. Turns out it was partly due to cheap led bulbs and me being an idiot.
I've got aftermarket rear lights that have the bulbs in a different position to OEM and an extra sidelight, which is a small 501 bulb that I couldn't see until I got my head right in there; anyway it had blown, replacng it fixed the problem. The bulb/socket I was testing was the indicator. What a dufus.

lol always the easy fix

stinkypaul wrote:What a dufus.

It's always heartening to read that I'm not the only one.