Weird Electrical Gremlins?

Ground point IE AND IG are in both front kick panels.

 

I dont have keyless entry on mine but I want to say only the turn signals and combo meter signals are supposed to blink. You must have something back feeding from the left rear into that ground circuit. All the exterior lighting uses those 2 grounds.

 

Oh that’s an interesting thought - I think this truck has had electrical issues for a while. A broken ground could explain a lot of this. Let me get this cable tracker and poke around a little more this afternoon and report back

 

So no grounds at the rear of the truck?

 

Connector BN7 is also shared by the rear lights and its located under the drivers seat do you have a wet carpet from a water leak or spilled something?

 

Nope - but I’ll remove the driver’s seat to confirm today. Last time I was under the driver’s carpet everything was bone dry, nothing looked out of sorts

 

Nothing at the rear of the truck.

 

Glad I’m not crazy. I’ll trace wires and check under the driver’s seat where the harness enters the cab. Fingers crossed it’s an obvious issue

 

Okay I’m back - unfortunately the Klein cable tracker I bought didn’t seem to work as well as I’d hoped. I couldn’t get any conclusive info from it. I have some extra thin multimeter leads that I used to spear the insulation and at least got continuity up until the harness T’d into the rest above the driver frame rail near the spare tire.

I removed the driver seat, inspected the main harness connections. Everything looked in order, no bent pins/water damage. Just lots of old dielectric grease. I do not have multimeter leads long enough to check continuity between the taillight plug and body harness. Might need to buy some.

I cleaned the two grounds in the kick panels. Everything was clean to begin with, and just as clean now.

The problem persists. Any other ideas?

 

I’m somewhat new to diagnosing electrical issues. What is a good tried and true way to find if a ground wire is broken inside without being able to check for continuity on either end of a wire?

 

Okay guys - IT’S FIXED!!! So after chasing wires and checking continuity all over, and finding nothing, I went back to the forums. I reviewed the wiring diagrams again that had been posted in this thread, and other TW threads.

Someone else pointed out that the DRIVER (LH) taillight was grounded to the PASSENGER (RH), and then the passenger side was grounded through the wiring harness itself (which is on the opposite side of the truck). WHY Toyota would wire things this way is beyond me.

SO - I pulled the perfectly working passenger side taillight to inspect. Lo and behold, one of the ground wires on the passenger side harness had been rubbing against the body of the bed and was shorting out. A little electrical tape later - ALL FIXED! Crazy crazy crazy crazy little thing caused so much havoc. Thank you all for helping, hopefully this helps someone else in the future.

 

Fuckin A man good job.

 

Manufacturers do some strange stuff, they build cars to sell, not to repair. Adding an additional ground to solve the problem would have saved lots of time and frustration.