Posted by Sherman in Idaho [24.32.202.166] on Tuesday, April 02, 2013 at 12:35:50 :
In Reply to: Re: as Tom said "ground" posted by Mike Stone in Idaho [71.39.211.42] on Tuesday, April 02, 2013 at 09:45:52 :
Best way to see if you have a bad ground, rather than removing and scraping everything that's supposed to be in the ground path, is put a meter (or a test light with a small low-power bulb) between a known good ground (something clean on the frame) and the suspected light bulb socket and turn on the light. If the meter shows voltage or the test light lights up, but the tail light or brake light you're testing doesn't, you've pinpointed which socket has the bad ground. Since grounds are usually combined at various points between the sockets and the batter, it's very common to get weird effects in which two bulbs come on dimly rather than one coming on brightly, or some unrelated bulb flashing when you turn the blinker on. These things can leave you guessing where to start, if you don't follow a logical troubleshooting procedure. I recently put together a trailer kit and had a really strange combination of trailer light problems that you wouldn't think would possibly be related, but it was all due to one star washer on a ground wire that didn't bite through the paint.
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