M4wd&Fabrications
Projects place => Tech => Topic started by: jaysenodell on May 06, 2014, 03:23:00 PM
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I'm trying to avoid thinking about this any more than I have too...
There are only two wires to the TJ front side maker/blinker bulb. If you use the black/yellow as ground you get parking light w/ blinker, but no "blinker only" (parking light must be on). If you use the black/yellow as voltage, then you get only blinker and no parking light.
It seems that the ground is shifting. Are the multiple relays bouncing ground around? I'd like to only use one side LED instead of two.
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You need a rectifier. Put a normal bulb in there and it'll work like you want it to. You need an LED that doesn't care about polarity
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(the marker lights on my trailer will run either way, some do have rectifying circuits in there)
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LEDs by definition care about polarity.........
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http://fierocave.home.comcast.net/~fierocave/parkturn.htm
With a part number from Radio shack for a rectifier
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I had a rectifier in there. And buy rectifier I mean I built one from diodes. I guess I was just to quick to give up. Thanks.
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Do I need to worry about this type of thing when installing stop/tail/turn LEDs into my bumper in place of XJ taillights?
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I guess what Mike said, unless your dont have seperate turn signals....
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Since you have separate turn signals, yes: you need a 5 to 4 convertor or wire one up yourself.
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Even if I buy stop/tail/turn LEDs that come with wires already for each of those functions? Was thinking it would be almost plug and play, as opposed to trying to make a stop/tail LED function with a turn signal.
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if its built in?
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If you have "all the wires" then you likely don't need to do any magic. The problem for me is the two wire LED to a 3 wire harness.
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Got it, that all makes sense.
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Stop/turn use the same wire, if you have a seperate turn from brake light then you need the converter.
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A good read on this.
http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f9/2-wire-leds-3-wire-conversion-write-up-933239/index2.html
Also
Here's how I fixed my 2 wire front LEDs:
You'll need an LED rated flasher relay. EP26 or EP27. Cant remember which.
You will need 2 IN4004 Rectifier Diods (PN 276-1103) and 1 560 Ohm 1/2 watt resistor (PN 271-1116) per side. ($3 at radio shack)
The parking lamp circuit gets (in this order) a resistor, then a diod, then on to the LED. The turn circuit gets a diod and then connects to the same side of the LED that you connected the parking lamps to. The other side of the LED goes to the ground wire.
For the side marker lights, I used Leds as well. To make them work, I capped off the factory side marker wiring and connected one wire to the parking lamp circuit and one wire to the turn signal circuit AFTER the diods right along with the front signals.
Results:
Before. Front blinkers would not function with the lights off. With the headlights on, they would act as running lights, then turn off and on to blink. Both green indicator arrows would stay illuminated when the headlights were on (Like I had 2 burned out front blinkers).
After. Works just like stock. With the headlights off, the blinkers flask on and off. With the headlights on, the front blinkers and side markers run at half power. When you turn the blinker on, they flash between the half power and full power. The indicator arrows work just like stock again with the headlights on or off.
I'm an electrical moron, so when I did this a couple months ago, I mocked everything up and tested it before soldering it all together. Some of the things I needed to swap around till it worked right were:
The positive and negative wires for the LEDs
The direction of the Diod
Where to plug in the side markers.
The whole thing took me about 4 hours including testing, soldering, and wrapping the harness in loom and tape. For that, my blinkers work just like stock, and look factory.
Tips
If you don't have one, buy a cheap little probe test light ($2 at harbor freight or autozone). Makes identifying what wire you're working with easy.
Make sure and pick up a box of different size heat shrink tube from harbor freight. There are a lot of solder connections that need the support if you want to avoid wiring problems on a trail rig.
Grab 3 rolls of different colors wire from radio shack.
I took the extra step of adding in 2 pin connectors so I could take the lights off if I wanted to without getting into the harness. Up to you. ($6 at radio shack, and I was there anyway...)
Grab a couple feet of wiring loom from autozone. Protects the wires and strengthens the connections.
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pretty much what I have on my whiteboard. Now I just need the wanderer to return so the Mrs wont keep expecting me to spend time packing instead of working on MLC.
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Ok, got my stop/tail/turn LEDs and am attempting to wire them up.
My Jeep has a trailer wiring harness with small black boxes attached and a 4 flat plug on it, I thought that was all I needed to use to make this a simple install.
I have everything wired up, grounds freshened. Really weird stuff happening... tail lights alone are good. Brake lights alone work great on driver's side, kinda dim on pass side, nothing on pass side if tail lights are on. Turn signal works great on driver's side, non-functional on pass side UNLESS brakes are on, then it works. If brake and tail lights are off, pass side signal is dim and tries to light up driver side as well.
These are a few of the weird things I get that changed as I freshened up grounds. I even went as far as running a ground for everything all the way back to the battery to eliminate that once I realized grounds were affecting things.
I took all the bulbs out of the sockets for the stock tail lights to be sure they weren't confusing anything, doubt they were. I cannot get the passenger's side brake light to work in the original harness with a known good bulb, could be an issue? I checked every single fuse.
Is the trailer adapter just going bad, perhaps?
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Could be corrosion in the adapter terminal. Pull insulation back and clean posts of terminal. Socket side is harder...
Could be corrosion in the splice. Try tracing the trailer harness back to where it is spliced into the vehicle wiring. Check each connection. If you are ambitious, remove current connection and re-splice. You may need to remove a small section of the vehicle wiring if you can see corrosion on the vehicle wire (through insulation).
Other than that and your pest bet is a fetal position under the trailer...
Good luck.
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hook a trailer to it to check?
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Is the trailer adapter just going bad, perhaps?
This, and what Jayson said about checking wiring.
Have you put a test light on the trailer plug output side to verify weirdness exists there (as it should, given symptoms)
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I have not confirmed that the weirdness is coming from the harness, suppose I could give that a shot. At one point, it almost seemed as if I was getting a flicker of full juice from the dim brake light as I played with the ground, never could replicate that after though. That's when I ran the long ground to the battery. May try freshening up some more grounds, this Jeep definitely has a history of electrical gremlins I have fixed by cleaning grounds.
Chad said Chrysler stuff turns off ground to control lighting, assuming that is what Jaysen started this thread to address and what the set of black boxes that plug into stuff in the rear quarter panel are there to undo and make useable for a normal [trailer] light, as well as convert from 5 to 4 wire.
Is it likely that the issue is the same as what's causing the the stock pass brake light to not work? Looks like that runs off a different harness down that side of the Jeep, trailer stuff is on the opposite side. I will also check where that harness connects in since I'm assuming the signal for that and trailer harness must have the same origin.
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Its ALWAYS the ground
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Its ALWAYS the ground
That's the problem? Or that turns the lights on and off, "Chrysler" style
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There are a few switched ground items but I was pretty sure that tail lights were not among them.
Eric is just pointing out that it's ALWAYS the ground when shit doesn't work. because it's ALWAYS the ground. Especially when trailers are involved.
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I remember my dad telling me that working on my 4 wheeler lights at 13 years old and its never been wrong lol
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X2 billion
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hats why my 4wheeler brake light doesnt work
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New trailer harness fixed all my issues!