Tail Lights aren't on at night but brake lights and signals work

Hey guys,

So I took a road trip to Laguna with a few buddies and as soon as we left my friend noticed my tail lights weren't on. I pulled over and checked the tail light fuse and it was blown. Replaced it, and it blew again right away. I have LED bulbs that replace the signals, reverse lights, and license plate lights but I know that the are all in in the correct way because they all work (or worked when I installed them) and I'm not sure if the combination of them all is to much power resulting in the blown fuse.

Tomorrow I'm going to put all the stock bulbs back in to see if that fixes my issue, but I need to buy more fuses first cause I went through all my extra ones haha... Not sure whats up

 

Do you have resistors for the LED turn signals?

 

Led pulls less power than halogen bulbs, check the wiring to see if it's shorting anywhere

 

I don't think that the LED's have resistors however I may be wrong. I am not very familiar with electrical work... If I remember correctly they are sylvania LED's. I will check the wiring once I get back from work!

 

Pretty sure they don't have resistors. Are they hyperflashing?

 

By hyper flashing do you mean flickering? I don't think the tails are, however I noticed the other day that the DRL LED's that I put in were flickering... I also noticed today that after having my blinker on for about 5 seconds, the speed at which it blinks in the cab becomes twice as fast. I have no clue

 

This might sound crazy... But have you done anything to your radio recently? After I was messing around with mine (forgot what I was installing) this happened to me. I went in again and cleaned up all my wires and I saw there was one that was shorting out on metal behind it. I forgot if it was to the radio or some of my lights. So if you have installed anything new recently I would go back and check your wiring for that

 

Also I've heard of the trailer wiring harness on our trucks cause some issues as well

 

Hyperflashing is when your turn signal is flashing twice as fast. Common with LEDs. Flickering could just be a bad connection between the LED and the housing.

 

Have You changed your blinker fluid lately?

 

Yes the LED are causing it to hyper flash, i thought it was normal because it does the same thing in my buddies colorado.
And I have not messed with the radio yet, I'll try pulling out the tail lights again to see if anything weird is going on back there...

What about the harness causes an issue? I haven't heard of this before

 

I just bought a brand new 2015 TRD off road so I would assume all the fluids are in check

 

Hyper flash is normal when resistors aren't hooked up. Once resistors are installed, the turn signals flash the normal speed. Hyper flash is pretty ricey.

As for blowing the fuse, try replacing either your front turn signals or the rear back to stock bulbs to see where the culprit is. I wanna say it's one of those.

 

I put the stock rear signals back in yesterday and put a 15 amp fuse in(ran out of 10 amps) in and it still blew. Later today I will get some more 10amp fuses and will simply put all the stock bulbs back in and just go one by one to see which bulbs are causing the short. Im hoping that putting the stock bulbs in will fix the issue all together...

And IMO the fact that the signals blink faster isn't really a bad thing, if anything it will make other drivers more likely to see the signal because it will catch their attention.

 

I've heard a couple times when I had my issue the plugs can get carodded or something like that. It wasn't my problem but if they look bad to you maybe try cutting the wires off? I'm not sure to be honest just may be something to look into

 

Turns out you were right, took the LED's out and ill have to buy resistors for them if I want to run them. Threw the stock bulbs back in for now

 

Right on man glad you found the problem. Same thing happened to me before so I was speaking from experience lol

 

Thanks for sharing

 

The bulbs were causing a short somehow which resulted in the fuse blowing repeatedly....

I took out the LED rear signal and DRL lights, and replaced them with the stock bulbs. Threw a new 10amp fuse and were golden... I still have the white LED reverse lights as well as the LED licence plate lights installed