When I got the truck a month or so ago the LHS diesel tail lights, put on by me nearly 10yrs ago were not working. I figured I had bad bulbs but after opening up the tail lights no bad bulbs could be found. Regardless I picked up some that were as close of a match as I could find in my tiny town at Napa on a Saturday. Put them in and no change in the problems. I then started looking at the wires. Now the RHS which works fine or did work fine the wires seem to be in the right locations. The odd thing is the other side, LHS, the wires are different. For example, on the RHS the blue/green wire goes to the tail light (this is just an example I don't recall exactly the colors now) but on the LHS if hooked up this way it doesn't work at all. So I simply put my volt meter on the wires, identified them and plugged them into the correct locations. Ok that worked, kind of. What really gets me is if the blue/green works fine on one side and is in the right location why is it not the same on the other side? Are these wires not tied together and basically in parallel? So if there is power to the blue/green on the RHS and it all works fine why would there not be power to the blue green on the other side and instead there is power tot he yellow/white? I know the simple answer is that they are mixed up somewhere. I am just having a hard time thinking that is the problem since I did this work and it was fine years ago. Plus I am pretty sure the dude who owned this truck the last 8+yrs didn't mess with the tail lights at all. I know this because I had siliconed the covers way back when to keep water out and that was still in place and this "seal" had not been broken.
Now I have turn signals in the rear on both sides, brake lights, back up lights and running lights. All is well, except now when I turn on the headlights the RHS doesn't work at all! The same day I messed with this a new problem shows up. My overhead old school Warn driving lights are going whacky. I have two sets both on separate circuits. One set was randomly coming on. Switch is off, key is off but one set of overhead lights just comes on whenever. This never happened on the truck before until I messed witht he tail lights. To keep from killing my batts I simply unplugged the overhead lights giving me probs. If I pulled the switch and then turned it off the lights would go out but 10 minutes later they would randomly come on all by themselves! Weird.
As far as the tail lights. I read the EI walk through and that is all fine and dandy except I have an Austrian truck and I have no orange wires behind my flasher unit! I really do not recall how I hooked these up nearly 10yrs ago but I do know it wasn't hard and they worked great until I sold the truck. I did buy some stock TD tail light bulbs from Scott but have not installed them yet. The Napa ones are very similar but do have some different voltage ratings, albeit still 24v.
Here is another odd one and maybe I am just a noob and they are supposed to be this way, I could see that for safety reasons. Any ways, with the headlights on all the 4wd & locker lights don't work. Turn off the headlights and they come on fine. Turn on the headlights and the lights go out. Is this normal?
Lastly, when I use a turn signal the trail light indicator in the dash lights up. I don't think this is normal but maybe it is?? I did open up the trailer light junction box at the back of the truck and all seems well, not corroded, dirty or any of that.
I do have some shoddy wiring under the dash. Crappy splices, not done by me but by a famous Pinz mechanic!!
Crappy stuff with crappy electrical tape over the crappy connections. This I plan to remedy with my soldering kit and some shrink wrap. I don't see this as being my problems but maybe it is? Cheers
