I'm having a hard time isolating a short ***Solved***

Did you unplug the suspicious module that was lighting up on your thermal camera?

 

Ya nothing changed. Confirmed its the certification ECM for the smart key.

 

I don’t see anything off. But you won’t checking voltage.

I’d use a test light at the relay to check for a short. But your going to need to unplug the modules and lights to do it.

I’m sitting in a restaurant eat lunch now.
Maybe @Dm93 can tell you faster way to test it. I won’t be able to sit down and look at module location until later tonight.

 

really appreciate all the suggestions, thank you.

The only one I'm not sure of is the J7 connector. All the diagrams I see have it located behind the radio in the upper dash. Mine is not in that location so I'm looking to see if its located somewhere else.

 

The Taco has an auto stop feature, as in it'll stop for you. I don't know if your Taco has that feature.
Also, everything tapped into the circuit wire going towards the stop lamps are meant as a trigger.
The auto break select is done by the antiskid module. This module applies the brakes without the driver selecting brake. Stop lights activate with the antilock feature.

 

Thanks everyone for all your help.

Solved the short issue today. There is a small batch of wiring coming out the front of the fuse box main harness which is tied into the main harness but not wrapped in it. It looks like the wiring is terminated outside the main harness. My light blue wire was there and had rubbed up against the frame causing the short.

With the H11 bulb, one lead to the positive terminal the other lead to the shorted pin in the fuse. I had already checked all the grounds with a power probe and they all came back solid. I unplugged everything in this truck and it never effected the light bulb. I'm assuming because the short was at the end of the line on a terminated wire there was no feedback when unplugging connectors. Any ways, I hit the ground wiring right next to the battery and the light flickered. I lost it a little as this short has been bringing me down for the last couple of weeks. I knew I was on the right path, removed the battery and cleaned/sanded the ground. As I was dong that I noticed the rubbed wiring up against the frame in front of the battery. What a relief. Now comes the fun of putting everything back together. Also found it super odd none of the wiring diagrams have the light blue wire heading out the front of the fuse box.

Here is a good pic before I opened up the main harness. This wire is sitting outside the harness.



These are after I opened up the harness.





In this pic you can see the terminations outside the main harness. It all was wrapped up tight covered and taped like hell.



Just for fun here is the current state of the truck. So happy I removed everything I could to find this.

 

Before you put it back together, is there anything (a toy, accessory) you want to install?

 

I'm not sure there is anything else I can install on this thing.

 

Glad you finally found it, shorts and opens can be some of the the most difficult things to locate in wiring especially when they are intermittent. You were lucky that it was a persitent short but it's always satisfying to find that wire the rubbed on something. The best part is no parts were thrown at it or required so aside from your time the fix was basically free.

That looks like a splice, I'll have to look at the diagrams later.

 

It's all therapy Buddy. Therapy.

S/F

 

I suspect it's this splice.

 

It wouldn't explain the STOP circuit working with relay removed.

 

I have a dumb ass question, what’s with all the sand? I give you the utmost credit for patience. Myself I would have jumped off a bridge. ‍

 

Entire engine bay is covered with it. It's a mix of left over muddy water, clay and some dirt. Shes been out for weeks at a time in the bush.