Electrical Problems

[RBurleson]

Golly... I think my truck is aware that the manuals are here...



Last night, the running lights spontaneously turned themselves on... Lovely, since it was pouring down rain. I stepped under the hood with the intention of just disconnecting the battery for the evening, to trouble-shoot it at my leisure this weekend. Oddly enough, the first wire I pulled off the previous-owner festooned positive post trailed sparks as I pulled it off... so I looked at the now doused running lights and decided that was good enough.



Hey, it was raining, right?



Next morning, I went out expecting to have to reconnect that wire to drive to work, but everything looked good when I keyed it over, so I just hopped in and drove to work. Still raining.



Sometime this afternoon my package from TechAuthority.com arrived, and by the time I walked out to the truck to drive home, things were amiss. No response when I key it over, and dimmed lights on the dash when I turned the key to the second notch. I popped the hood and on a whim, reconnected that wire... and it started right up.



Since it is still raining, I'll study these new manuals and their diagrams from tthe warm house... I'm wondering how much of the rats nest of wiring under the dash and near the battery.



Looks like a weekend of electrical cleanup... .



Randii

 

[RBurleson]

... man, I hope it doesn't rain all weekend. :{

 

[Philip]

Running lights turned themselves on. Sounds like you might have burnt up the headight switch wire harness. It is a sore spot on the Dodge trucks.



Drop your headlight switch and look at the wiring harness plug. It is probably burnt out around the tan wire in the middle of the switch. This is the wire for the marker lights. It might have shorted out to another terminal.





All the above is under the impression that the harness is stock and has not had inquiring minds and fingers where they do not belong.

 

[B.G. Smith]

Electrical

Sounds like you might have disconnected one of the batteries when you pulled the wire off and the other one was weak since it started after you hooked it back. If your truck has the 7 pin trailer connector at the rear you need to check it too as these are famous for corroding and turning something on that should be off. bg

 

[Philip]

B. G. our trucks run single batterys. The trailer plug is a good place to check. I hadn't thought of that one.

 

[RBurleson]

Well, it quit raining... .



I've rerouted a bunch of stuff under the hood and cleaned up the battery... . still a good bit to go -- all the aftermarket stuff mostly (air horns, compressor, headlight wigwag, brake controller, stereo, amplifiers). I have the stock wiring back as it belongs -- the one main starter cable and its two same-clamp cables, and then the two separate fusible links that run back into the harness. I added a separate terminal (I junk-yarded a mid-70's Cadillacs plastic/brass post) for auxiliary hots, with a 12" stretch of store-bought starter cable.



That seems to have fixed the issue, but that's kinda hard to be sure, since I didn't actually *fix* anything in particular... just re-routed everything. Sometimes it is all in wiggling the cables.



I'm headed out to rewire the trailer lighting... it was sketchy before my 6000-mile 16-state holiday trip, but when it flaked in Reno, I pulled all the wires and wired off the plug terminals. Band-aid, but it got me where I needed to go...



I'll peek that headlight switch, too... .



Randii