Tail light install question

No fries

No fries

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2005
Location
Fort Mill
Wiring in these, trailer LED lights, since the stock one have been destroyed on the 93 XJ. I thought I had the wiring correct but the turn signal flashes both lights like the hazards are on. Both lights are wired the same brake and turn on the bright wire, running lights on the dim black wire. Not sure where the cross over is coming from? Not sure where to start chasing.....

Also the reverse light briefly comes on as shifting into R. If shifter is in middle of R and P lights stay on. Is there an adjustment for the switch.

Wire nuts are temporary till it is correct.
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You may want to post the pinout for the LED lights.

Tell me if I'm missing something here: You've got two white wires, both of which are grounded, which leaves 3 wires to do all other functions.

The 4 functions in the Jeep schematic, performed with 4 discrete bulbs for each side, are:
Backup
Turn
Stop
Running

So you're missing one function, if you assume you have 3 LED functions trying to do 4 bulb functions, and can't do split-voltage control because they're meant to be trailer lights (everything is turned on with 12VDC, instead of different voltages for different functions).

There are trailer lights that have the STOP and TURN combined on the same wire, and lights that have the STOP and TURN separated. That is determined by the type of trailer connection, because you need more wires/signals for one than the other, so need extra connections in the trailer connector, etc. The combined functions would usually be handled by the tow vehicle, like the Trailer Tow Relays that are called out on that schematic.
You seem to have trailer lights that have the STOP and TURN combined, if my intuition is correct, if you only have 3 controlled wires. You might be able to tap into the trailer connector wiring and use the combined STOP/TURN function?


I see from the wire nut picture that you've wired:

Brown/LtGrn for the backup
Blue/Red that seems to be license/park
The Tan should be turn signal, but what other wire have you connected to that (White/Tan?).....?

If the turn signal is Tan, that additional wire is probably tying both lights together such that they both flash at once....? Presumably you're tying the brake and turn signal together.


EDIT: I see that the White/Tan is to the trailer tow relays, but the rest of the trailer tow relay info is missing from that schematic so can't tell if there's anything wrong there. I would almost guarantee that's the issue though, as you're likely bridging the two separate turn signals together with the White/Tan.
That's easy to test though, just remove the wirenuts with the TAN and White/Tan on BOTH the LEFT and RIGHT, and check continuity on the White/Tan between LEFT and RIGHT sides. If they're electrically connected, that's your issue.
You would then need to find the proper outputs from the trailer wiring for the combined TURN and STOP functions (probably NOT the Tan wires), if you still want to use those LED lights.
In other words, it would appear that you're grabbing the Tan wire from the input of the trailer tow relays,, and you would likely need to use whatever wires are for TURN/STOP on the output of the trailer tow relays.

Everything you need should be there somewhere, you just need to find out what it is. You've got a trailer connection, and you're using trailer lights, sooooo.......
 
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Fabrik8 said:
You may want to post the pinout for the LED lights.
Click to expand...
Part of the problem I can't find it on the manufacturers website. Optronics has tons of products but I have yet been able to find a schematic on their site. The model is TLL211XRTKX
Fabrik8 said:
Tell me if I'm missing something here: You've got two white wires, both of which are grounded, which leaves 3 wires to do all other functions.

The 4 functions in the Jeep schematic, performed with 4 discrete bulbs for each side, are:
Backup
Turn
Stop
Running
Click to expand...
Yes There are two wires grounds which I assume are for the red lights and one for the "white" (BU). The red and black from the 3 pin go to the red and the 2 wire red and white go to the BU
Fabrik8 said:
So you're missing one function, if you assume you have 3 LED functions trying to do 4 bulb functions, and can't do split-voltage control because they're meant to be trailer lights (everything is turned on with 12VDC, instead of different voltages for different functions).

There are trailer lights that have the STOP and TURN combined on the same wire, and lights that have the STOP and TURN separated. That is determined by the type of trailer connection, because you need more wires/signals for one than the other, so need extra connections in the trailer connector, etc. The combined functions would usually be handled by the tow vehicle, like the Trailer Tow Relays that are called out on that schematic.
You seem to have trailer lights that have the STOP and TURN combined, if my intuition is correct, if you only have 3 controlled wires. You might be able to tap into the trailer connector wiring and use the combined STOP/TURN function?


I see from the wire nut picture that you've wired:

Brown/LtGrn for the backup
Blue/Red that seems to be license/park
The Tan should be turn signal, but what other wire have you connected to that (White/Tan?).....?

If the turn signal is Tan, that additional wire is probably tying both lights together such that they both flash at once....? Presumably you're tying the brake and turn signal together.


EDIT: I see that the White/Tan is to the trailer tow relays, but the rest of the trailer tow relay info is missing from that schematic so can't tell if there's anything wrong there. I would almost guarantee that's the issue though, as you're likely bridging the two separate turn signals together with the White/Tan.
That's easy to test though, just remove the wirenuts with the TAN and White/Tan on BOTH the LEFT and RIGHT, and check continuity on the White/Tan between LEFT and RIGHT sides. If they're electrically connected, that's your issue.
You would then need to find the proper outputs from the trailer wiring for the combined TURN and STOP functions (probably NOT the Tan wires), if you still want to use those LED lights.
In other words, it would appear that you're grabbing the Tan wire from the input of the trailer tow relays,, and you would likely need to use whatever wires are for TURN/STOP on the output of the trailer tow relays.

Everything you need should be there somewhere, you just need to find out what it is. You've got a trailer connection, and you're using trailer lights, sooooo.......
Click to expand...
The wires are cut from the Tail light harness, I cut the bulbs off and connected what seemed to work best. The white/tan wire is the brake and That is what I was thinking maybe the cross over is coming from. Tan is the turn. I'll check for Continuity between the white/Tan and also look into using the trailer harness for the lights. It is currently wired with a larger "STD" 7 plug connection. That may have the single wire that controls Stop and turn as you mentioned above.

The only way I got to this point was from etrailer comments and help, and trial and error, really disappointed there were no diagrams in the box or on the Optronics website!
(that I could find)

Guess this is what we get for trying to save a few bucks and buying "cheap"
 
No fries said:
The white/tan wire is the brake and That is what I was thinking maybe the cross over is coming from. Tan is the turn. I'll check for Continuity between the white/Tan and also look into using the trailer harness for the lights. It is currently wired with a larger "STD" 7 plug connection. That may have the single wire that controls Stop and turn as you mentioned above.
Click to expand...

Now I understand what's going on. You can't combine those wires, like I thought.

There is a Tan for the left side turn signal (actually turns into LtGrn for most of the schematic), and a Tan for the right side turn signals, which are obviously two different signals. The White/Tan is fed to BOTH the left and the right, but there is a separate bulb for the turn signals and for the brake lights. You are combining those two independent circuits on each corner into one circuit by combining the Tan and the White/Tan wires. So now the Tan (right turn), LtGrn (left turn), and White/Tan (brake) are all the same connection instead of 3 separate connections. There's your problem.

For the Turn/Brake, you need to splice into the wires that go into that 7-pin trailer connector. All of the 7-pin connectors have a combined STOP/TURN wire for the left, and a STOP/TURN wire for the right. The trailer relays have already taken care of combining the TURN and STOP signals at each corner into one signal at each corner.

The reverse lights and running lights can come from the existing taillight wiring, or from the trailer connector (doesn't matter).
 
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This is the best I can find, and it seems to agree with the pinouts of the industry standard 2-pin and 3-pin harnesses that eTrailer sells for them. Each connector has a ground (white) and the rest are signal wires.


81ciDWBf-vL._AC_SL1500_.jpg
 
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Thanks for your help! I'll tackle it tomorrow after work, but yeah the old brake/turn bulb had two filaments so it was two circuts, im pretty sure I understand it now.
 
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