Of Course I thought I was a real good electrician to......
After spending part of Dad's day re-caulking the 3 piece roof to stop the encroachment of unwanted percipitation I decided to address my electrical short as well. and this is almost as stupid as it gets. I had an interior light that only worked part time on the left side of the tear and on the other side the matching innterior light that did not work at all. I disconnected all the dc circuits except the tail lights. Armed with a hot battery I energized 1 circuit at a time and tagged them for what they were. The on and off occasionally light was due to the fact that I fed the inside light off of the 12 volt porch light but instead of feeding from the always hot side before the switch I fed it after the switch. Now the porch light is outside and I am inside trying to figure out why I have an intermittant short in the interior light. I remove the coverplate from the electrical boxes and retrace the circuits I rechecked to see that the porch light is still working and my attention turns to the inside light and after checking I try it again and it works. Must be a loose wire recheck all wire connections and probably went for a beer and noticed the porch light was still on and turned it off my mysterious inside short has reappeared. Wiggle and giggle wiring and nothing helps.
( Maybe I should have noticed that the inside light works only when the porch light was on but I never made the connection in my tiny brain) .
This mystery solved I moved the hot feed to the other hot feed from the switched side. I won't bore you with the trials and tribulations of my dead circuit on the right interior light but to say after exhaustive surgery on the wiring I eliminated every other problem so today at lunch I will be purchasing a new 12 volt bulb

