Well, I got to see something new today. The customer brought this 1998 Chevy K1500 in with the complaint that the right rear turn signals would not work with the park lights on. I thought no big deal, the right rear socket board has weak internal ground. Seen it a hundred times if I have seen it once. Went and got a new board and three new bulbs out of the cabinet. Installed the new assembly and checked to make sure I had corrected the problem. No such luck. Well it has to be a weak ground signal to the board. I will just add and extra ground. Problem solved. Wrong. I have to admit this one had me stumped for a few minutes. I racked the truck up so that I could check the wiring underneath. I started looking at the wiring around the back of the truck and noticed that the trailer socket mounting bracket was bent. No real big deal but I saw that the wiring would unplug, so I though I would unplug it, to check the signals at this location.
When I grabbed the wiring to disconnect it, I noticed right away that it was warm. Warm wires? There should be no stinking warm wires at this connector. Let’s see what is happening inside. Notice the melted plastic just to the right of the right turn signal terminal in the trailer socket.
A little clearer view. Notice the red dots to the right side of the socket assembly. They are built in LED test lights for the different circuits. They will illuminate any time a particular signal is active.
Apparently they will also kill a signal when shorted internally. If you look closely you will notice that I disconnected a harness connector behind all of this to remove the shorted socket from the circuit. The customer decided not to replace the socket assembly at this time.