Round Tail Lights Wiring Problem

[D&M2]

Hi Everyone,

I just spent the last few days wringing out an electrical problem that was driving me nuts. I have installed the round tail lights and wanted to use the red lights for stoplights and the amber lights for turn signals. After hooking eveything up, all of the lights worked as expected with two exceptions: activating the brakes lit all four tail lights and the emergency flashers also activated all four tail lights.

I checked and rechecked all of my wiring but found nothing that was cross wired. I also removed the wiring harness ground and grounded all of the tail lights directly to a point in the trunk. Still no luck. After calling B&B, they indicated that they normally use all four tail lights for both of these functions. This implied that things were working as expected even if it didn't meet my needs.

Barry at B&B did tell me that the brake lights were controlled thru the steering column so I metered out the steering column connections and did find that white brake connector was tied to both the yellow and green rear turn signal wires. I called Ididit to find out if this was how these should be configured. Their answer was that this was correct but, after doing some research, John was able to tell me that things should work as I wanted them to if I removed the white brake wire from the wiring harness side of the steering column connector. After testing this, everything worked just as I wanted them to.

Thought I would pass this on to anyone else who might be attempting the same thing so as to save someone a little frustration and time.

Mike

[Ron61]

Mike,

When I had my car I had the same setup and the first thing that I did was split the wires so the 4 rear lights were separate. Red ones for brakes and Amber for turn signals. I had the car for over 12 years and never had a problem with it.

Ron

[trularin]

The problem I have with this is seeing the brakes are on with a single 1157. IMHO, all four rear lights should come on bright when the brakes are on.

[Ron61]

Tru,

No one including the CHP officer that checked mine had any problem seeing the red on during bright daylight. Some guys that used roll bars like I had, also put brake lights in the center, back side of them.

Ron