I recently had to have my gearbox rebuilt. When it was taken out, I didn’t take enough notice of the wires, which came off the reversing light switch on the side of the box.

There is a green, and a green and brown cable, which come from the plug, which goes onto the reversing light switch. The green and brown cable, which is on the right, is fine but the green cable has been broken and I am assuming this needs to be reconnected up to the other green cable, but there is another cable connected onto the green cable, in this case it is yellow.

Can anyone tell me where this yellow cable goes and what it's supposed to do?

Regards.

If it's a standard type 9 reversing switch it depends how whoever built the car wired it.

It could be wired switched earth (ie an earth is provided to one side of the switch permanently) or switched positive (ie 12v is provided to one side of the switch when the ignition is on).

What do you get with a multimeter on each of the two wires?

As for what the wire does/goes to - who knows - provides +12v to something else in the tunnel?

[Edited on 2/10/11 by SeaBass]

Thanks for your help Seabase.

Having had another look at the wires and checking out the continuity, it seems the green live wire may not be live at all, and I think the yellow wire (which is actually red but looks yellow in the photo) could be a live taken from a different circuit.

So next job is to connect up the red wire and see what happens.

Wish me luck.

If you're in sure just cap and stow them. You don't need a reversing light legally.

Section 29 Table 1 of the IVA Manual says that Reversing light is Mandatory

However it also says it can be operated by selecting reverse gear or a switch with a telltale

Sorry, didn't realise it was for iva. Mine went through mot this year without it working no problem.