Next we will go ahead and talk about the ground on the tail lights themselves. Potential problems that could happen there. We have done all of the steps to make sure the grounds are good and then your lights still are not working then chances are it is with the tail light ground itself. Lets go move back there. On this particular ground problem here we see the blinker working but it is not as bright as it should be and also if you want to take a look at it, take a look at the truck. We actually have our running lights working too but we do not have the running lights working on the tail light. You can see how the tail light is trying to work but it is actually opposite the truck. The truck goes on the light goes off. They should be in time with each other. It could be something simple as a loose light. So we can actually just take the nuts in back and just tighten them down to see if we get any better performance out of it. (01:14)
Something you can do if you are out in the road and all of a sudden it may quit working, try this first off. This is not a permanent fix but this will get you going. Okay lets go check the light out now. Now we have got our running light circuit working and the turn signals are in time with each other. And also you can tell it is a lot brighter too. Since we tightened these nuts down and we have got everything working fine we know that is our ground problem. So what we are actually going to do to fix it for real is we are going to go ahead and just take everything apart and basically clean it up and reassemble it. We are going to take off these nuts and go ahead and uninstall the light. Now you see we left the power on and we are totally disconnected from the ground it is actually trying to get ground through any available circuit. That is how we got that same problem to begin with flashing and no running lights. (02:20)
Inside the slots here we will just scrape them out and wash it down to get back to bare metal and and then we will just go ahead and reassemble it really. Ideally you want to use a file to clean everything out but obviously not everybody is going have a set of metal files in their garage so you can get by with a nice screwdriver and just scrape it out really good and then on the back side of the steel here where the nut touches the angle iron here you want to go ahead and put some sand paper on that just to get all of the dirt and grime off of it too. Really you just want to clean it up really good and get down to the bare metal. And then you wash it down to pull out any extra junk. All right lets spray down the studs a little bit too on the light and clean those up. You can use a paper towel or your fingers or anything just to get the dirt and stuff out of the threads and basically what was really happening was that the nuts touching the steel and the nut transferred to the stud here and also the edge of the threads are catching ground too. (03:41)
So everything you keep clean as possible will keep it lasting a lot longer. Take and we are actually using a battery terminal brush and just kind of clean it off. Dry it off and then we will just go ahead and reassemble it. Here is a little track for the wires. Make sure if fits in that track. If the wire gets up here you could actually mash the wire into the steel and cause a short that way. So lets go ahead and reassemble it and get our lights back on. You can already tell we are just touching it and it is wanting to work right away. All right go back to the other side and inspect our work. Make sure your circuits are working okay. All right as you can see we have got our running light nice and bright and also the turn signal is working as it should. That was all just sticks in the ground issues with the lights. After you have got it all cleaned up put some spray paint over it that will kind of help protect the little seems and nooks and crannies from moisture getting inside there. Kind of like the plastic coating on top of the wire.
Do you have a question about this product?
With thousands of product installations and troubleshoots, we don't just sell this stuff, we know how to install and use it.
Please include the year, make, and model of your vehicle, being as specific as possible, if you have a question about a custom fit product.
Subject:
Name:
Contact email:
How can our experts help?
