powdrhound Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Some signs that a Reflect-o-lite 1400 has a bad ground connection: Right Brake light is dim when lights are not on, no right brake when lights are on (and turns off tail light too); right flasher not working sometimes; right turn light on dash and front right turn light dimly lit when lights on. This evidently had been a problem for quite a while before I got the SkiBumMobile. All the back right side wires had been hacked for probing and taped. I finally discovered the bad connection after replacing all the wires from the end of the Toyota wires to the fixture and adding a ground lug to the chassis. The ground wire going to the unit is riveted to a strip of metal. The strip is screwed to the back of the three fixtures. The screw to the stop/tail fixture appeared tight, but still gave an intermittent lack of ground. Cleaned the surfaces and re-tightened the screws. Lights now working! Toyota Ground - White\black stripe Fixture Ground - White Toyota Tail\Clearance - Green Fixture Tail - Green Toyota Brake - Green\white stripe Fixture Brake - Red Toyota R Turn - Green\yellow stripe Fixture Turn - Yellow (Toyota L Turn - Green\black stripe) Toyota Back Up - Red\black stripe Fixture Back Up - Blue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OlympicMtnBoy Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Some signs that a Reflect-o-lite 1400 has a bad ground connection: Right Brake light is dim when lights are not on, no right brake when lights are on (and turns off tail light too); right flasher not working sometimes; right turn light on dash and front right turn light dimly lit when lights on. This evidently had been a problem for quite a while before I got the SkiBumMobile. All the back right side wires had been hacked for probing and taped. I finally discovered the bad connection after replacing all the wires from the end of the Toyota wires to the fixture and adding a ground lug to the chassis. The ground wire going to the unit is riveted to a strip of metal. The strip is screwed to the back of the three fixtures. The screw to the stop/tail fixture appeared tight, but still gave an intermittent lack of ground. Cleaned the surfaces and re-tightened the screws. Lights now working! Toyota Ground - White\black stripe Fixture Ground - White Toyota Tail\Clearance - Green Fixture Tail - Green Toyota Brake - Green\white stripe Fixture Brake - Red Toyota R Turn - Green\yellow stripe Fixture Turn - Yellow (Toyota L Turn - Green\black stripe) Toyota Back Up - Red\black stripe Fixture Back Up - Blue Thanks, this may help with my Chinook strange tail light problems! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulfstream Greg Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 The ground wire going to the unit is riveted to a strip of metal. The strip is screwed to the back of the three fixtures. The screw to the stop/tail fixture appeared tight, but still gave an intermittent lack of ground. Cleaned the surfaces and re-tightened the screws. Lights now working! Had that exact same problem in our Sunrader. Watch out as the wire breaks off the strip easily. Can't remember if I soldered a wire to the strip or not but I did solder and shrink tube all the connections inside and out. I was looking at our new Gulfstream and there is a huge pile (grape fruit size) of connections on the underside with the guillotine type connectors just waiting for me and my soldering iron. So far everything is working OK so it has not been a priority but Murphy will step in when we get ready for a trip I am sure. Bad grounds usually send people searching in the wrong places for the problem. If things are acting like there are gremlins loose in the electrical system a ground some where is the usual cause. Its one of the biggies when hooking up trailer lights as its common for folks to assume the trailer ball is enough of a ground. When a ground goes bad the electricity finds a sorta ground through other bulb filaments in the system. Results are that other bulbs can light up when they are not supposed to. That leads to the thinking there must be a short somewhere when its just a bad ground. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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