No brake light/taillight on driver’s side, everything else works

Howdy all,

My driver’s side taillight and brake light stopped working yesterday. Driver’s side turn signal and reverse light work. Passenger’s side everything works

I replaced the dual stage bulb, 1157, no change. Cleaned the contacts and added dialectic grease, no change

Doesn’t look to be a fuse grouping.

My truck had a harness for trailer wiring but I disconnected it years ago after losing all my rear lights, no issue since

My multimeter needs to be replaced. Any suggestions in the meantime please?

 

I'd say to put a visual on both the positive and negative attached to that bulb socket. Where the power wire splits to feed both sides the +12V should be looked at as well. Without a meter things have to be manually traced.

 

The plot thickens: driver’s side brake light works, just not the taillight.

They share the same dang bulb!

and everything is good on passenger’s side

 

Is that a 4 connector bulb running two different circuits through it?

 

Naw...the 1157 has only two contacts for +12vdc, the grounds/rtns are the case. If the bulb is good the problem has to be either the socket connection itself or the power feed back to the split where the +12Vdc is fed to both tail lights.

 

Does this help any? Get that multimeter working.

 

Haynes:

 

The bulb has two different contacts, stop and turn and tail lights.

 

Right, two hot contacts with the case acting as the ground/rtn.

 

thanks, new multi meter should arrive in the mail any day now!

 

Yes, but the right and left turn are independent and could possibly even be the signal switch.

 

Turn signals are working, just the tail light is out.

 

Oh that makes things a lot easier!

 

What seems so simple on paper often turns out to be a bitch on the actual hardware.

 

Would you mind please sharing the top portion of that diagram at your leisure please?

 

here you go. Haynes manual.

 

Thank you!

 

I don’t get it. If I’m reading the diagram right, both switch and relay go to driver’s side rear light, then to passenger’s side. How can the pass side running light work then but the driver’s doesn’t?

Same bulb between running light and brake light. Shared ground.
The harness pins are the same so I swapped taillights, same result. Driver’s side running light still doesn’t work

 

Now I’m curious what the heck these are though? Truck only had a 4 on hitch on it in the past, disconnected since

 

Is that a broken wire hanging there?