It starts out slowly... You'll get the warning that one of the rear lights is out. You get out to check... sure enough, there's a light out. The next time you start the car, however, it will magically be working again. You think to yourself, "It must have just been a fluke". Until it happens again... and again, and again. Eventually happening immediately when you start the car. It seems like some module in the car will cut power to whatever rear lights are indicating a problem, and will only reset again when shutting off the car and starting it again.
It usually happens in groups, for me it was the rear right fog, rear right reverse light, and one or two of the three bulbs that make up the taillight. The separate beeping and warning for each individual light will eventually drive you crazy.
I have read countless posts on this topic, all of them eventually resolved by replaced the entire taillight assembly. I absolutely refused to do this and I've tried just about everything to resolve it at this point. I finally was able to get a solution that works, and I wouldn't even dream of posting this here if it hadn't fixed the issue for at least 2 months (which it has). Everything I tried prior to this would only last two weeks at the most.
One thing I noticed every time I took the taillight out was some charring / burning around the ground wire in the connector for the taillight. Cleaning this connector up with a Dremel would fix the issue for a week or two, but it would always come back.
Now I realize that this may indicate a bigger problem, such as some power terminal inside the taillight shorting to ground, but I've been through this taillight inside and out. The ground is basically just a huge rail inside the light that distributes ground to all the bulbs. What I don't understand is why the problematic lights are always the same 3 when they all share a common ground. One thing I did notice is that the three lights with the problem are the three closest to where the ground rail enters the taillight - though this may just be a coincidence.
In any case, I finally got this permanently fixed by basically bypassing the ground inside the connector (the brown wire), with my own.
I started by drilling a hole in the back of the tail light assembly, drilling a hole in the ground rail, and soldering a wire to it that exits the taillight and terminates with an insulated male blade connector
I then stripped back some of the insulation on the portion of the ground wire before the connector in the car, soldered a piece of wire there and terminated it with a female insulated blade connector (I covered the solder point with electrical tape after taking the picture)
After putting everything back together and connecting my 2 blade connectors, every light in the taillight works like champ and I haven't had a single problem for months.
Total cost of the fix: $2.35 (I already had everything I needed except the blade connectors and extra wire). This may not fix the issue for everyone as some of the posts I read had an issue specifically with the LED strip at the top of the taillight, but with similar symptoms. Hopefully this will help anyone who is having the same issue I was though.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Kevin1
Bookmarks