This 2005 Chevrolet Impala came in withe the complaint that the right rear turn signal was working some of the time. The customer had already replaced the bulb and stated that it seemed to work okay for a few days. The tail light assembly is attached to the vehicle by four plastic nuts with brass inserts. The two upper one in the picture below.
After the interior cover is folded down the other two can be seen. With all four nuts removed the light assembly will pull out of the rear of the vehicle. There is one harness connector that has to be disconnected and it can be accessed once the assembly is loose from the vehicle.
I had checked and there was the tell tale rough surface on one of the bulb leads that indicates a poor connection between the bulb and the socket terminals. I call the local Chevrolet dealership and found that the tail light sub harness would have to be ordered and that my cost was over seventy dollars. Time to come up with a better solution. I located a socket assembly with the correct number of terminals, the correct focal length and the correct indexing tabs to fit the light assembly.
The new socket assembly comes prewired with three wires. The old socket assembly had five wires going into it. Being familiar with GM designs, I knew that the old socket was also being used as a junction or splicing location in the harness assembly. No big deal. I cut both black wires and spliced them into the wire that attaches to the “G” position in the new socket assembly.
The yellow wire connects to the “A” wire position. The two brown wires attach to the “B” wire position.
After all wires were spliced together properly, I taped the wires together to make a neat harness. I curved the harness around the curve of the light as shown below. I also installed another brand new bulb. Even a relatively new bulb that has minor damage can take out a new socket in a short amount of time. Anytime I go to the trouble of replacing a socket assembly, it gets a brand new bulb.
The socket assembly seems to be a better fit than the original since there is a locking tab that lines up with the locking arm on the socket assembly. If you need one of these sockets please click here.
Again, I made sure to keep the harness contoured to the curve of the assembly.
With harness reconnected to the light assembly I watched to make sure the longer wires cleared all obstructions.
Another one fixed.