I have a '93 SC400 that came w/'96 tail lights. The conversion has been working fine for 2 years. Last week I noticed I had a running light bulb burned out in my right tail light. I pulled out the tail lights and found the bulb that was cooked. I also found that there were different sized bulbs in the running lamps both left and right. Some of the bulbs were 12V W5W and some were the larger 12V W16W. So, I thought I would just replace all the bulbs with the 16Watt bulbs. I bought the new bulbs, put them in, and flipped the switch and WOW, were they brighter.

The next evening I was driving and someone flagged me down to tell me I didn't have any tail lights. I got the car home, went through the fuse boxes and no blown fuse, however there was a 15Amp fuse in the 'running lamps' fuse slot instead of a 7.5Amp like my owners manual says should be there.

The sidemarker lights in the front work fine as do the running lamps in the headlights. Headlights work fine as well. I've checked for power in the rear wiring harness and there is NO power going back for the rear running lamps. I'm afraid I cooked one of those teeney 24Ga. wires under the dash. In the rear, the wire for the running lamps is a green w/red stripe.

Anyone have any idea where I should start looking for the burnt wire? I haven't smelled anything cooking I'm just assuming I burnt a wire.

Thanks...

 

A little help here...anyone, anyone.....crap

I guess I'll start following the wiring harness in the trunk and work forward. Eventually I'll get to the fuse box.

 

Well my tail lights are fixed and here's what I found.

First of all, on the '96 conversion lights DO NOT change the running light bulbs from the stock W5W. If you leave the W5W bulbs you won't need to read the rest of this.

In my case, the 'light failure' module that is in the drivers side of the trunk just above the power antenna unit burned out two resistor wires on the pcb (printed circuit board). In place of replacing the entire unit, I pulled the board out of the module body and soldered some new resistor wires in.

I'm running the '93 'light failure' module and I have the bulb pulled out of the dash so I don't really care if the module works or not, just as long as it allows power to connect through it.

There you have it.

 

I went ahead and bought a new one but it keeps burning out. Any other suggestions