Tail light wiring...., WHat goes where... Options

[Andyrew]

For all the time that i've owned my car, I never figured out which wire goes where....

If someone could give me a color scheme, or a something...

Andy?? I know you know it...


Thanks all...

(driving the car a little... in the dark, need lights... No cop excuses for me...)

[lapuwali]

There are full-color wiring diagrams at Pelican. Zoomable and everything. There are also black and white (but marked for color) wiring diagrams in the Haynes manual.

[Dave_Darling]

The markings for the taillights are incorrect, I believe... Philinjax has hand-drawn diagrams of which wire goes where.

However, if you have a continuity tester and a wiring diagram, you can figure out which wires go where yourself! You start by checking inside the light sockets. You'll see that down in the bottom of each socket, there is a metal tab. (One socket has two tabs.) That tab is the power connection for the bulb; you can take your continuity tester or ohmmeter and check which pin on the back of the taillight cluster connects with which each tab in each socket. The side of each socket is the ground; check which tab connects with the side of the socket using your continuity tester.

Once you figure out which tab goes with which socket, you can start matching the wire colors to the functions of the wire (e.g., backup lights are grey/brown) and matching that to the tab.

This technique should work for most automotive lights.

--DD