Well I finally figured out way my tail lights wouldn't work. The Black/Yellow wires going down the firewall and down the frame rail to the rear of the vehicle had shorted out to the frame and melted 4 wires together.

Why didn't that blow any fuses!

BTW - I bought the truck this way. And once I fixed all the wires, the tail lights started work again so that tells me they where still hot. Or is there a Circuit Breaker on that circuit - I couldn't find anything in the wiring diagram?

Typically when there is a short, it pops the fuse and lets you know that something is shorted to ground...

 

Did you check all your fuses ?
Its not uncomin that a wire burns [ in this case not the tail ] and takes out the others around it .

 

Good question. My guess is fuses was bypassed by previous owner. Fuses should have blown.

 

All the fues are good...

 

I had a similar problem with cheap fuses that would not blow. They would allow things to melt such as my fuse panel. Apparently they are made of a different metal that a good BUSS brand fuse because I switched back to them at the advice of some on the forum, and the fuse started blowing again, and I was able to locate the same type problem with my running lights on the tail gate. I would say the fuses you had were cheap-o's, but I could be wrong. That was my problem anyway.

 

If you are melting three or four wires together that come from three or four different fuses, your able to pull current from all the fuses together. If you have a 10 amp and a couple of 20 amps all tied together, you'd have to pull over 50 amps for any of them to pop. Your wire would burn in two first if it was 16 or 18 awg or so. Now, that doesn't explain why they would get hot enough to melt in the first place but does explain why it won't blow a fuse once they are joined into one.

 

May not be your situation, but, like already said, the el-cheapo fuses will not shoot, they just melt the plastic.

Never use anything, except good old BUSS brand.

 

If the wires are shorted to each other and not to ground the fuse may not blow also.

 

ah..... It was shorted to what I belwive was one Ground wire (black) and the frame! Teh other wire colors I belive was Blue/white and Red/white I think. But the white color could have been yellow. Anyways with it grounded out to the frame it should of shorted ANY fuse in that loop is the way I look at it? We are not talking about a bad fuse that blows at 50% or 150% of the rating - we are talking about a straight path to ground.

And considering I just split the wires apart, replaced the burnt section of wire ( double twist, solder, shink wrap & tape) and then the tail lights started working tells me "juice" was still flowing in the wire. Doesn't make sense to me.

 

Might want to trace wires from lights back up to cab. Could be the prior owner hotwired them from another source that's not fused?

 

Thats the way I fix those .
There still may be a problem , but to fix stuff , you always need to fix the obvouse stuff 1st , then if theres a other problem , it will be easyer .

 

Just a quick thought, but what are the amp ratings on your fuses? It is possible that the fuse is bigger than what is suppose to be in that slot. This will melt the wires and the fuse will never blow if there is a 20 amp fuse in a suppose to be 5 or 10 amp slot (I had this problem on my Mercedes).

 

This was my thought too. If the wires are 14 gauge, the maximum fuse size should be 15 amps. If someone has put in a 20 or 25 amp fuse, it could melt the wire before the fuse.