Noticed this morning that my rear tail lights stopped working since yesterday morning. Brake turn and reverse lights all work as do the cluster lights. I checked the fuses in the dash and under the hood. Both were good. I pulled out the multi-meter and tested a few places for power.

No power at the bulbs or trailer plug for parking but brake, turn, and reverse all worked. I pulled out the headlight switch to check the Black w/ yellow tracer that I read on here are quite prone to burning out. It looked fine and when I tested that with the meter it didn't have any voltage.? Does that mean that the headlight switch is bad?? The front parking lights DO work. Is there a separate wire from the switch that powers the front and rear?

I tried looking in the Haynes manual for a wiring diagram for the switch but there wasn't one. I'm going to download the service manual (again) and try to find it in there but am curious if anyone has any other ideas as to what could be going on...

2001 Ram Sport with the 5.2

 

Are you getting power on the black/yellow wire with it plugged into the headlight switch, and the park lights turned on?

 

Nadda thing on that wire..

 

Bet your license plate lamps don't work either then..... Seems the headlight switch only has one power source. If you aren't getting anything out on the blk/yw wire, but, other stuff works, gotta be a bad switch. (although, that is a failure mode I have never seen before.)

 

Yeap no license plate lights either! Guess I will try and find one of those tomorrow!

 

well I just put a new switch in from autozone and still no taillights! Checked the power on that black/yellow wire and 11.78 volts. put the old switch back in and yeap still has power but no taillights... I guess its time to start looking for a broken wire. Hopefully its right at the trailer plug connectors/boxes.

 

Figured I would give an update. i dropped the spare tire yesterday and found a broken wire right above the rear axle. Patched that up and now I have light! The drivers side is working intermittently so I need to track that down. The license plate light on that side still works so it shouldn't take to long to figure it out!

 

had the same problem many years back, took 2 weeks to find it, traced to whole system, And I mean pulled every wire out of wire loom. I put an after market stereo in a long time ago before this happened one of the wires was shorting out ( just rubbed through the casing ) It was the dimmer wire. on the stereo. simple clip of wire , Soldier, heat shrink, fixed the entire parking light problem