no brakelights and turnsignals

I just wired in some trailer lights with the converter doohickey today. When I finished I had my daughter hit the brakes and signals so I could put a test light on the plug. turnsignals and headlights worked fine, no brakelights on my rig or at the plug. At that point all I did was check the fuses. all were good. then the turnsignals stopped working within 5 minutes. Now I have no turns and brakes on my jeep, the trailer wiring is already disco'd. tested all fuses again, nada. replaced the brakelight switch with a brand spanking new one, still the same..nothing.
the weird part is the flasher keeps clicking non-stop. no lights just clicks, It doesnt matter where the signal lever on the column is. hit the brake pedal and the clicking stops. I ran a live line from the batt all the way to the back to check the lights and they all worked with constant 12v. when i took the constant away, the brakelights worked for 3 presses of the pedal then faded away kinda like the 12v jump gave something a quick charge? im lost at this point. can anyone offer advice??


91,ax15,4.0,231,no cruise. base model. and yes I searched, most posts were check the fuses and switch, I did both.

Edit: I have no turnsignal lights on the dash anymore and the hazards are out as well.

I woke up this morning and replaced several fuses even though they looked good and test lighted fine, swapped in my spare flashers (both in the under dash fuseblock) and ...nothing, still no hazards, brakes or turns. the tailights work fine.
all fuses in the main underhood block look/testlight fine.

why would the flasher have constant power?

I get a flasher pulse on the pink wire on the brake light switch plug (harness end) that disappears when I plug the switch in. no other power to the plug in any of the 5 remaining slots.

This sucks, Im supposed to be picking up a new trailer in an hour, and all I did was wire in a trailer light converter.

turn signals decided to work..I played the flasher swap game again. not sure what happened there.

brakelights come on very dim, I can barely see the element light up in my cupped hand, then fade away to nothing.

I pulled the lower dash to look for anything obvious..nothing looks worn or broken, actually everything is surprisingly clean.

I had some very similar to this happen, so I ended up disconnecting my 5 into 4(or was it 4 into 3?) trailer harness, hooked the lights back up and it was fine. Turned out my trailer converter was fried. Got a new one, hooked it up, and everything went back to normal.

It is disconnected and still not working..

Did you test light both sides of the fuses....my fuse holder had so much slop in it, it was not passing power to the load side. You might go back to the rear light main connector, disconnect it and measure power on the plug. If it's good there, the problem is aft of that.....

which connector is the main rear light connector? all I have on hand is a moldy hanes manual, A buddy is bringing his FSM eventually..maybe. That should help if he shows..

The brake lights DO come on very very dimly and fade after a few seconds, its hard to see in daylight. I talked to a diesel mechanic and he seems to think I fried a ground somewhere. I cleaned the ground wire under the trim in the rear area on the DS (all my rear trim is long gone) the batt. to body and was about to do the block to firewall one. probably not the right ones but after 20 years its time anyways.

where are the ground for the rear lights? that seems like a good place to go next.

Got it!!! the PO did some funky BS wiring and ran the brake hot to the batt. I always wondered what that wire was for. fixed and working well now.