Blowing the tail light fuse

ThatGuy

ThatGuy

Need Bigger Tires
Supporting Member
Location
Big Island
Aloha all
I ended up with the gremlin that blows the tail light fuse in the engine compartment fuse box. Takes out the tail lights, the front side marker lights, and the dashboard lights. The typical solution is that there is a short somewhere in the wiring. I have a 2002 Gen 1.5 SE manual, 3.3 liter engine, 4wd

I yanked on the wiring for both side marker lights up front and banged on the lights too. No response.

Then I pulled the plastic interior piece off the rear hatch and yanked on all the wires inside the hatch. Took of the rear lights wiggled everything all was working even replaced the tail/ brake light bulbs. Also pulled the rubber plugs where the wiring bundle goes thru from inside the truck to the door. Yanked on the cables and nothing. All the cables looked fine. Also wiggled the rear license plate light wires but everything is fine.

So in “short” I can’t make it trip. But if I drive about 5 minutes and the fuse blows. Any thoughts?

Thanks, Ken
 
Last edited:
reaver

reaver

Lockers Installed
Supporting Member
Location
Caldwell, ID
Out of curiosity, have you done anything with the stereo?

The wire that controls the dash illumination also powers the radio illumination. I had a short right there at the radio in mine (stupid spade connectors). My wife also had a bad ground after I installed her new radio (I even used my multimeter to find what I thought was the ground wire). After replacing the spade connector with a better connector, and running a new ground for the wife's radio, no more blown tail light fuses.
 
ThatGuy

ThatGuy

Need Bigger Tires
Supporting Member
Location
Big Island
Thanks to both of you for the replies. I did have a new stereo and backup camera installed a year ago but haven’t seen any problems. Still I will put that on the list of possible causes. And I took out the plate lights and wiggled them around and they didn’t short it but neither did anything else.
So I put in a new fuse and repainted the shovel I have on my roof rack. Has worked fine for a couple of days since then :). LOL. Only problem now is I can’t take it to my mechanic now since it’s working again. I remain highly suspicious of the front marker lights though. Maybe they just dried out. We had some very wet weather for a while. Never saw condensation in them though.

Many thanks to both of you for your replies
 
ThatGuy

ThatGuy

Need Bigger Tires
Supporting Member
Location
Big Island
Brunnie said:
Paint your shovel!! (see above)
Click to expand...
Fuse is still going strong. Have not replaced the shovel even though the paint is fully dry!!! Hanging in the garage on my wife’s side. Gotta keep it at a distance from the X.

(P.S. I bought the 250 piece fuse kit for 8.99 on Amazon, so definitely following Beefy’s strategy too!)
 
ThatGuy

ThatGuy

Need Bigger Tires
Supporting Member
Location
Big Island
So end result was the short came back and was correlated with heavy rain. I had checked and wiggled all the possible contacts front to back and couldn’t trigger it. So I went with side marker lights as they were singled out as a likely cause. I had avoided because it looked difficult to get to them but it is actually super easy I was going to buy new units but the clips on acting to the wiring bundle were frozen. So just did the following : To access drivers side light turn wheels all the way to the right. Unscrew two screws holding plastic number to frame
Use 8 mm wrench to undo bolt on inside of light. Twist and pull out light. Find worn wires. And corroded bulb Splice and solder short length of wire and shrink wrap it IMG_8589.jpegIMG_8592.jpegIMG_8594.jpeg
After splicing and shrink wrapping I used spray on adhesive tape. Then split some shrink tubing to make a protective layer and taped up with scotch 33+ electrical tape and reassembled. Passenger side was ok so just cleaned the socket and replaced bulb with LED. Now I just need a heavy rain to leave it out in for the final test.
 

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ThatGuy

ThatGuy

Need Bigger Tires
Supporting Member
Location
Big Island
Peacemkr45 said:
Might want to check the other side too.
Click to expand...
Forgot to mention I checked the passenger side it was fine just replaced the bulb. It was much easier to get to these than the instructions on the web made it seem since you can easily pull the plastic way out to get to the light. I was dreading this but it was very quick for the bulb change only side. Here is the photo of pulling back the drivers sideIMG_8585.jpeg
 
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