Okay, so long story short, I bought a doa, Dakota. I got it running and driving. Yesterday I noticed the reverse light was out (originally every light was working). So I figured, no problem. Oh boy was I wrong. I'm guessing the previous owner wired up some dolley to the truck because there are a bunch of wires going through the tail light housing, wiring harness, and some connectors feeding upwards into the bed. The current driver-side reverse light socket is not factory. It looks like they wired up a Dorman universal tail light to it in it's place. There's a green ground wire taped to the outside but that ground is ran up to inside the bed and held up with a screw. I wish I took some pictures to prevent my horrible description but my question is this. Would a standard tail light replacement socket work for the reverse light? I can't find a "reverse light socket" anywhere on the internet.

 

I could not find one anywhere either. Ended up jury rigging the one I had.

 

Here are some pictures of what I’m currently looking at. Think the socket for the reverse light is toast. Might try to order the same thing and rig it up with a new one.

 

I would be tempted to go alookin' for a rear harness. Car-part.com could help ya out.

 

Seriously. That thing is a mess.

 

Just wire in a regular taillight socket from Napa that fits the Dakota. They always have them in stock. Put the regular bulb in there as well so it makes both contact points.
https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/ECHLS6478?impressionRank=1

 

So upon further inspection, the wiring was pretty simple to figure out. He spliced into the harness (those little connectors on the harness wires) and ran, what I'm guessing, extra wiring out to whatever dolly or hauler he used. The grounds were put in and connected to I think a fuse box (which was blown). So I just snipped and taped up the excess wires that didn't need to be there and it looks a hell of a lot cleaner now. Now all I need to do is follow the make-shift harness that he zip-tied along the frame to the front of the truck and rip those out as well.

 

I'll look into that, thank you! Does it matter that the linked socket has 3 wires and the factory socket only has 2?

 

absolutely not. Since the harness and bulb will have 2 functions, you could probably hook both wires to hot. Just put bulb in and put truck in reverse. Play with the wires until you get the bulb to light up

 

sadly after some digging I’m finding out that the harness that goes to the rear driver harness either has a messed up ground or a short somewhere. Which would explain why he had been jumping them from the passenger side which works perfectly fine. So the rear harness was fine the entire time. >.> guess it’s time to do more digging. No idea how the heck I’d find the part itself.