Ok so I have been wondering about the tail lights on my truck camper for a couple years now, they work but are dim, which to me suggests a bad ground. where were the older truck campers grounded around the plug location for the feed to the truck? I'm talking 1991 Ish. should there be a ground wire hooking to the tie down eye, to make the truck part of the ground?
I did an LED taillight upgrade on my 1996 popup. It easily doubled the visible light output.
I have been wanting to do that for a bit, I am just having a hard time finding a tail light that is the same size or bigger than what's there, everything modern is small and sleek so you will see the outline from the old one and it would just look bad in my opinion. I'll find the right one sooner or later
I agree with no need to go all the way to the battery. But it's a guaranteed know you have a good ground as opposed to possibly scraping rust and general grunge off to find a good test point and questioning that ground if nothing changes. I figure once he knows whether or not it's a ground issue he can move on to finding a more convenient place to connect.
I know nothing about truck campers. But if you have a spool of wire try temporarily running a ground wire from the negative battery post under the hood and along the ground to a negative point at the taillight. Does it get brighter?
ya, I'm going to have to play with it, the electrical on the camper was a mess when I bought it so I had to redo a lot of the stuff. I was trying to avoid removing a light but it looks like I may have to. maybe do a led upgrade at the same time.
Right idea but no need to run wire to battery. Just ground it anywhere on the truck.
Unless of course the trucks factory wiring/grounds are suspect.
But that’s a separate issue from the likely cause of just not having a good ground somewhere between the light and the end of the pigtail.
Does your camper wiring/plug not have a ground wire? Never seen a trailer or camper where you manually have to hook up a ground wire separate.
not manually hook it up and yes it does have a ground wire in the plug, but what I had to redo the plug I was trying to remember if there was a wire that went from the harness to the eye bolt of the tiedown (permantly attached) kind of like what bigfoot does for their truck campers to provide an additional ground to the truck.
I am going to have to break out the multi meter this week on my days off and recheck that wiring. it should work off the 7 way, so maby I have a broken wire or something somewhere.
