The Domie

I have replaced the bulbs (multiple times) and the panel the bulbs plug into. Still have no upper brake light on passenger side and the lamp out light and dinger are driving me nuts! I have 2, 7 pin plugs on the truck, one in the bed and the bumper one. both work the trailer lights and brakes just fine.
Trouble seems confined to the truck only.
Any ideas? What color wire runs that upper brake bulb?

carl48

it only takes 30 seconds to pull the strip but i do not think it is there. the 03 has a very bad problem with the ground to the bulbs because of the design of the wire less three socket strip. when it gets dark have some one mash on the brakes i think you will find one side is brighter than the other the dimer side will have a ground issue most have been in the three plug strip a few have been in the plug fortunately i have not seen any in the ecm. if it is in the strip you can open it up and trace it out, very easy repair and reseal with silicone. what the problem was to get the ground strip to not have to cross over a hot strip they swap the filament ground on each section of a bulb giving only half of the area for contact it makes you wander where the engineer that made this one up went to school

The Domie

Thanks C48, but I don't understand the fix. Trace what out? I havn't opened up the bulb strip yet so I have no visual on what you are pointing out.

Dodgezilla

Sounds like you did all the right things to fix it. Did you check to see if there is juice going to that light bulb?

The Domie

I'm still trying to find out which color wire supplies that bulb. Any idea?

Dodgezilla

No. I would venture to say that both brake lights on each side probably feed off of one power wire though.

SHREK

I am having a simiar issue with mine. I replace my driver side break light every month and a half to two months. Im really getting tired of this. Same problem as well?

Asher

I found one way to extend the life of the bulbs is to make sure your buying bulbs that have glass bases. The factory bulbs have plastic bases and the contact wire melts into it and causing arching, the glass bases don't allow this to happen.

Another option is the get some LED bulbs, the main reason of the lights failing is heat. The LED's won't make that kind of heat, but the problem is that good leds that can replace our bulbs are expensive.

I have even kicked around the idea of taking apart that circuit board and seeing if it could be retro fitted with the good old 1157 bulb sockets. Or maybe even figuring out a way to fab up a new back that completely replaces those boards. It might be alot of work, but it would perminately fix the problem..

Are the newer trucks running this same design of could we just use thier tail lights???

Dodgezilla

You know, I just noticed today that my upper bulbs do not come on when I hit the brakes. Are you guys sure they are supposed to? All my other brake lights work.....

The Domie

Dodgezilla ; You sparked the question!
The top lights are not suposed to work. Someone had added a wire to the factory harness that went to a 4 pin trailer plug. My computer was sensing that wire attempting to light both top lights in the rear and thus was signaling a "lamp out" warning.
We cut that wire out and all is as should be!

Replaced the turn signal switch and the panel behind the rear light, but kept the costs under $100 for our troubles. Live n Learn

thanks