Rear lighting problem

Pedro

Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2017
Messages
49
Location
Sant Cugat del Vallès, Spain
I recently found a problem in the lights on the rear of my 97 TJ 4.0

A friend who was driving behind me, during the day, warned me that the right brake light did not come on.
When I reviewing it, I remove it and I put it and the problem disappeared.
But already, while reviewing everything, I discovered this problem, a problem that has suddenly appeared, without having recently made any changes.
By day, all the lights on the rear work perfectly, alone or together.
At night, when putting the position lights, these alone work perfectly.
The problem arises when at night, with the position lights on , I act the brake lights , and/or any turn signal or warning lights, then, all the taillights go crazy.

I have reviewed the installation and note that the previous owner made the conversion from USA to Europe, adding a fog light and adding the license plate with lights required here, as well as changing the left and right assemblies to the built-up export model ones.

To eliminate causes of possible failures, I have uninstalled the fog light and the license plate lights and I have reviewed both, the left and right assemblies, but the problem persists.
Is it possible that there is a ground connection problem in any of the circuits, or that there is a defective ground problem?...or what?.
Has anyone had any experience?
 
The TJ rear taillights are grounded to the body. It's a very, very common issue for abnormal taillight behavior like this to be the result of a bad grounding issue. That's the very first place I would look, as I'm willing to bet that a bad ground is your issue.
 
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Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I proceeded to disassemble the whole installation since it was appreciated different interventions on the original installation, the last due to the placement of a tow ball. It had a mistake with the rear fog light. Also noted that a new cable for the brake lights was installed by a previous owner. The modifications made previously were made with very poor quality. I always use heat-shrink to insulate the joints instead of insulating tape. In effect, I placed two new grounds on the bolts of the fuel tank protection and redo the entire installation including the trailer connector. It Works!.
 
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