Replacement Tail Light Wiring

[BSWS]

I just installed a couple of the Partsam brand LED tail light assemblies. Their wiring is a little strange but I understand most of it. Their housing has only one ground wire and it appears that it is connected only to the backup light. I realize that internally it may be handling all of the LEDs. But Winnebago used a ground wire at each of the 3 lights, so I have 2 grounds leftover, I decided to connect them to each other. The new turn signals are working but I don't have any tail lights. My 15A fuse tests good. Has anyone wired these and found the proper wiring?

[Morich]

I'm not up on them and it looks like they have a fair number of types, so do you have any drawings, etc for how they are wired in the fixture?
That would be a place to start but I can verify that all the grounds should be connected together as there is one common item and that is the frame for ground.
But then there should be one hot wire for each function and they should be tied each to a different hot wire on the RV.

One tricky thing about LED over other bulbs is that they do care about polarity.
Can we read into this that yuou don't have a meter to test with?
that can get difficult but can be worked aroudn as you do have some lights which do work.
When your turn signal flashes you would see a burst of 12 volt battery each time the signal flashes. So if no meter, you can tie the taillight wire to that turn signal wire and expect it to flash as the turn signal. Use it as test light, perhaps?

But if they did not give you any type of instructions to use, they may have also thown a wrench into things by making you think all the white wires were ground but the taillights wires may need to be reversed!
No idea who or where these were built but "standard" is not always standard in different places! I would look at how some of the battery and grounds might be reversed to try to find a different combo?
It doesn't blow LED to be backward, they just don't work! If you had an LED bulb,you could try flipping them around but I'm guessing the are solid.

On drawings, is it possible there was a diagram on the backside of the fixture. I know of one case where it was there if folks peeled the rubber off the back!~

Dumb, yes, but we live in an age where dumb is common!

[G fox]

I am replacing the front clerance lights on my 2010 Adventurer with led lights, Will the existing wiring work ok with the wiring? Two of the original lights 122y were gone so I am taking the three that are left out and replacing all five lights

[Morich]

Originally Posted by G fox

I am replacing the front clerance lights on my 2010 Adventurer with led lights, Will the existing wiring work ok with the wiring? Two of the original lights 122y were gone so I am taking the three that are left out and replacing all five lights

Yes, the existing wiring will certainly handle the load for LED as one of the big things about LED is that they take far less power. So the idea of replacing existing with LED should be simple. But that does require some install instructions on the new lights to show what they did with the wires and colors!

The one big difficulty on LED is that they have to have the polarity correct or they just set there, while incandescent will light up either right or reversed! Sometimes we have to turn the bulb around if they are the plugin type that can go in either way!
It doesn't harm the LED to wire backwards, but they just refuse to work!

IF they tell you what wires are ground, then you find the ground wire on the exiting and tie them together. Normally all ground wires can connect to one as they all go back to the frame eventually.
Then to get some function like the tailight wire ID'd, use a meter and find which wire goes hot when you turn on the taillights, if you have totally no idea before starting.
Then go to the next function like left turn and find the wire which flashes hot as the left turn is turned on and connect each ht wire to the one needed going into the fixture.
Very much like wiring a trailer up without knowing which wire on the trailer nor which wire coming out of the vehicle.
ID one point on the vehicle by looking for the point which goes hot when you turn it on. Then tie that point on the vehicle to one of the points on the trailer to see what lights up. If you do the taillights first and the turn signal on the trailer lights up on the first try, you have to try a different wire!
But most of the time we get some kind of directions or markings to follow and it is nice for the next guy if we follow the "standard" wiring plans!

[BSWS]

Thanks Richard, I did actually use my meter to confirm Winnebago's wiring but the wiring info that Partsam provides isn't great. Now that you've informed me about the polarity with LEDs it seems very likely I have a ground issue. The wiring code doesn't tell you which are the ground wires. They only list one ground wire for the backup light.

[BSWS]

I finally have my new tai lights working, but not without a lot of complications. In the process of experimenting with the wiring I knocked out the 12V power to my tail lights, license plate light, and all front and rear marker lights. After many hours of searching the internet, and talking to Winnebago, everyone's answer was Fuse 22 in the fuse panel to the left of the steering wheel. I checked and rechecked that 15A fuse many times, but since it was still providing power to the parking lights I knew it wasn't affecting my tail lights. Everything I was reading was steering me away from the fuse block under the hood. Partly because the only lighting fuses in there were for the towing circuit. After running out of anything else to test I revisited that fuse block and started pulling and testing fuses. Fortunately, I found a bad one, #57. It's a 20A that feeds the Trailer Tow Park Lamp circuit. I was excited to find that it also feeds power to all my clearance and tail lights. While reading hundreds of posts about no tail lights and no clearance lights, I never saw that fuse mentioned. I hope others will find this post and save themselves many hours of aggravation.

I do appreciate the information Richard provided in this thread, that's the first I'd heard about LEDs and polarity.

[Morich]

Part of the confusing thing about RV is the way the builder often orders a stripped chassis froma builder like For, etc. They then add the RV on top of the chassis but they never have nor need very much info on what the chassis builder does.
Kind of like if we did roofing. We might never ask much about what the builder used for the rest of the house. WE only do the roof, so we only speak "roofing".
The plumber does plumbing and the electrician does his stuff without ever knowing much about the rest!
It does make it hard to get the full story but when Winnebago guy adds the tailight, about all he needs to know is that he ties white wire to green wire or whatever colors are used at the time! Which fuse feeds those wires? He likely doesn't care or know!

And the chassis builders have their own service folks to keep in business so they don't want to tell too many people who might want to fix it without hiring their service department!

Finding drawings for the chassis electrical is near impossible until it gets old enough to vote so nobody wants that repair work!
My general feeling is that if it would be on the normal car/truck, I look under the hood but if it is only on RV, I tend to look in boxes inside!

[Beaker55]

I bought the Partsam LED tail lights, too, but have not installed them yet. I'm going to use these lever wire connectors to connect the 3 original tail light grounds to the single white ground on the Partsam LED units. I can't think of any reason not to combine/stack the ground wires together. Any thoughts from the group? Thanks for any advise you might have on this option!


It's nice to have Winnebago's wiring schematics for this work, too!