Re: 1996 Dakota 3.9 L five-speed 4 X 4: When I turn on my parking lights or headlights, the green arrow (for left turn signal) comes on (does not flash until I use the turn signal).

 

Check the bulbs. I bet one of them is blown. They are dual filament bulbs, so, one side or the other can break, and lay across the other filament, and you get both on at once, regardless of if you have the headlights on, or using the turn signals.

 

Another choice is that one of the grounds is floating. Walk around with the 4 ways flashing. Is one bulb dimmer than the other 3? Now, turn on the parking lights. Walk around again. Which light is different? You can skip checking thr right side for now. Knowing our trucks, I'll bet the front bulb socket, the plug where the pigtail pluggs into the body wiring, or possobly the connectors on the back where you would plug in a trailer harness , in the frame right about the back end of the frame. Odds on the front where fumes from the battery are

RwP

 

Just checked flashers and turn signals and parking lights and head lights. They all appear to perform equally fine in the daylight. I will check again after dark.

 

Head lights aren't in the circuit, you can leave those off.

Hence my saying "parking lights" and not "headlights".

Also check the "wig wag" lights at the front corners.

RwP

 

Checking at night, the front turn signals and parking lamps are equally bright and function as they should (front side markers trade off blinking with the front turn signals).

The right rear is brighter than the left rear. However, the right rear lens has been replaced and the left rear lens is factory original which may account for the difference. I will do some more checking tomorrow.

 

Next step: Pop the left rear light bulb out and see if the inside light goes out when parking lights are on.

RwP

 

I failed to read the above suggestion before I had every buttoned up again (still think it is a good idea).

Meanwhile this is what I did: swapped the rear tail lamps (3157K) left to right, right to left and cleaned up the sockets a bit.

Now the green arrow for the left turn signal on the dash no longer comes on when I pull out the headlamp switch to either parking lights or headlamps.

However, in its place, the blue high-beam indicator now comes on faintly when I turn the headlights on and then after a few seconds it gets even dimmer (probably can only see this at night). Weird. (this is with the multi-switch on the column set on low beam).