10amp fuse keeps blowing taking out dash and tail lights Green left turn signal stays solid green

I looked at a lot of the older post about this topic, but I did not see any that led with the left turn signal staying in the solid green position before the fuse blows. This is what I noticed.

Went out for a CVS run at night and everything was fine, 2 min into the ride left turn signal stay on (not blinking ), this has happened before but usually fixes it self. A few more miles down the road the whole dash goes dark and the only lights I have on is the radio, and headlights. Everything else goes dark, it figures i pass a police officer at this moment and he pulls me over for not having tail lights. I told him about what just happened and he said that my brake lights and turn signals did work. He said check your fuses, and yes that is what happened. The fuse was the 10 amp fuse for tail in the fuse box under the hood.

The next day I cleaned the battery and all terminals and replaced the fuse. Then for the last week it worked fine. Today I blew the fuse again coming home in the rain.

I pulled off the tail lights and check out the bulbs, they have some corosion. I did replace the bumper and it came with new license plate lights.

I installed a new trailer harness from etrailer- which was real nice, they made it so all connections would work with existing tacoma harnesses.

So now I am back at the beginning trying to take one step at a time to figure this out. So any help would be great on where to start, only reason I made a new post on this topic is because of the turn signal staying solidly lit. Maybe it could be a clue and help someone else out aswell down the road.

Thanks for reading

 

First, remove the trailer harness to eliminate that from the scenario. Even when new, they often cause problems, especially when they get wet.


What are the specs on your truck?
Do you have LED bulbs?
Are the tail lights stock?
Have you modified anything?

You obviously have an intermittent short to ground on the tail circuit. Remember the tail circuit isn't just for the tail lights, it is also for illumination.
This includes your front parking lamps, and pretty much all dash lighting.

Here is the tail and illumination wiring diagram for a 2003 truck.

 

Since you installed a new trailer light harness New License plate lights.

I would look around that area a wire rubbing or pinched someplace once in a while shorts

 

Truck is a 2002 tdr 3.4 ext cab
No LEDs
Tail lights are stock right now, but i ordered some new oem lights from carparts.com, should be here mon or tues. The old ones have a lot of corrosion on the back of them and seem a little loose, so they could be letting in moisture. Some of the mounting screws dont tighten up all the way.
I have some time today, I am going to give a good inspection of wiring in all the areas around the back hitch, bumper and front turn signal. Sometimes we get lucky and spot a obvious problem, but that would be to easy.