I have a 2017 Ram that I recently damaged the front passenger side door. I dropped it off at the body shop to have it fixed. I picked it up yesterday and went on my way. I was driving and turned on my right turn signal. A message on the dash said the right turn signal bulb was out. I know that the body shop repainted the fender in order to blend the paint. So I figured they had taken the headlight fixture out and plugged it up incorrectly. I did some investigating and realized that when I turned my headlights on, the turn signal bulb stayed on solid. I had no headlight on that side. At one point, and I was never able to recreate it so I don't know how I did it, the headlight bulb was flashing off and on while I had the turn signal turned on. I can't remember what happened when I turned my high beams on, but the high beam didn't come on. I know the owner of the body shop personally and was going to take it back to have them check it, but I thought it might be a simple fix and I could do it myself. But when I looked under the hood, I couldn't figure out how to get to the plugs. I'm not a car guy. So I looked on YouTube to find videos how to change the headlight. It looked to me as though there was one plug that plugged into the housing and it would only go one way. If that's true, then it's not an issue of being connected incorrectly and would mean that I have bigger problems. I'm certain that everything worked correctly before I dropped it off to have it fixed. I can't imagine they would mess with the wiring just to repaint the fender and fix the door. Any thoughts and ideas on this are GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!

 

Right, the connector is keyed, they would not be able to plug it in incorrectly.

The symptoms you described though are classic symptoms of a grounding issue. I'd suspect that somehow a ground was either left disconnected or damaged during the accident or repair process. I would expect the ground to be near the headlight assembly, so it seems unlikely that the ground would have been damaged when the damage happened to the door.

-Rod

 

Problem solved. I took it back to the shop and they had connected it wrong. There were two connections and both plugs are the same. So they had them reversed and just didn't check it. It took them about 10 minutes to take the headlight out, switch them, and put it back in. So it works fine now.