Left taillight does not work

Tiny
MARK BRANDON HEIZER
  • MEMBER
  • 2003 DODGE RAM
  • 5.7L
  • V8
  • 4WD
  • AUTOMATIC
  • 204,000 MILES
I have the truck listed above 2500 that the left rear taillight doesn’t work. The brake, turn and reverse lights work, just the tail light doesn’t work. Is there a way I can run a wire from the right tail light to the left side for it to work? If I can, what color are the wires for both sides?
Thursday, March 21st, 2019 AT 3:51 PM

1 Reply

Tiny
CARADIODOC
  • MECHANIC
  • 33,873 POSTS
The tail light wire is always black / yellow, but that is the wrong way to solve this problem. If you can go through all that work to run another wire, why not take the easier route and find the break?

My students learned real quickly that running another wire was never an acceptable professional solution. You need to know why the original wire has a problem to figure out the cause, and if it will affect other wires in the harness. One good example is a harness that is draped over the sharp edge of a metal bracket. You can't just add a second wire because the original one will still be shorted to ground. Even if it is cut open, one end could be shorted to ground, so adding a new wire will just put a short in the circuit. How long will it be before the next wire in that harness also rubs through and shorts out? What if that happens on a dark Saturday night 20 miles from home, and the engine stalls and won't restart?

In the case of your tail lights, you also have the license lamps on the same circuit. If the splice is corroding, it will likely affect the those lamps in the near future, then you'll be back down there again. The right way is to find the break, then perform the proper fix once we know what caused the problem.
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Monday, March 1st, 2021 AT 12:31 PM

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