3rd Gen Stopllight on & off

[BIGNASTY]

Just something that I found odd. Had a Brake light go out replaced it with another 3057 Bulb and it worked for sometime. Then I would go over a rough patch of road and the LAMP OUT indicator on the dash would come on NO TAILLIGHT then it went to on and off mostly OFF.

Everything looked normal when I took it apart. I ordered a New 3 bulb socket (Dorman) from some Amazon Place. Its been installed now for a couple of weeks with no reoccurrence of the problem.


KIND OF WEIRD

 

[Dick Langendorff]

I had a similar problem with bulbs burning out. Brake, backup, etc. Replace the strips on both sides just like you did. No more problems. Well worth the investment.

 

[jgillott]

Evening Big. It very well could have been just a bad socket. Or, it could be the early sign of the power distribution center going bad. My 04.5 started that way with one brake light not working every once in a while. That continued until by the end I only had one headlight and everything else wouldn't work. Replacing the power distribution center fixed it and it has been fine since. Again, I'm hoping that it isn't your problem, but just be aware that there have been issues with that on the early 3rd gens.

 

[cerberusiam]

The strips burn out internally after a period of time. When weirdness happens just replace them.

 

[BIGNASTY]

Thanks for the thoughts and info Pard's

I read someplace that the socket that holds the light bulbs had a Circuit board. Now I don't know if it indeed had a Circuit board inside? or if the nomenclature was referring to the entire light socket as the Circuit board?

anyway time will tell

Thanks again.

BIG

 

[cerberusiam]

If it was a long gray or white plastic piece with 3 bulb sockets in it there is a circuit board inside that breaks and\or burns out.

 

[BIGNASTY]

Looks like this

 

[brods]

A picture of the inside of the socket assembly here : https://www.turbodieselregister.com/threads/253916-Rear-taillights?p=2457482#post2457482

Didn't see where a circuit board goes.

 

[BIGNASTY]

I didn't think about breaking the old one apart, I had thrown it away and at -4* I wasn't that curious about it.


Thanks for the pic

 

[Blu-meanie]

Come on Big, -4° is tee-shirt weather in your neck of the woods.

 

[BIGNASTY]

Come on Big, -4° is tee-shirt weather in your neck of the woods.

Ya I know Blu but its been Tee-shirt weather for a little while now. Supposed to get and stay colder according to the Farmers Almanac, Guess I need to harden off to the cold

 

[Gibbs]

Those bulb socket assemblies don't have any kind of circuit board inside them, only some aluminum bus bars/strips. There's nothing that can really burn out. The problem lies in the design of the bulb base and the metal socket on the truck. This combination presents a very small surface area for current to flow through, and even a little bit of contamination or poor contact creates high resistance and slightly arcs/burns the folded over "wire" on the base of the 3057 bulb. As a matter of fact, in the 11 yrs of owning two different 3rd gen trucks, I've never replaced a taillight bulb due to the filament burning out--only due to the wire on the bulb base getting burnt/pitted. What I do is take a small pick and bend the wire out into a slight arc shape on the side of the bulb base, scrape the wire with a knife, and put some dielectric grease on it to keep the connection clean. Every now and again, they'll get a bad connection and I'll repeat the clean/bend wire/grease the connections and it'll work for a another year or two.