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tail light wiring

Kejtar

PostMaster General
NAXJA Member
OK. I'm making my own taillight boxes and I'm pretty much done. Now comes the wiring question.

The box I made will take 3 separate lights: stop, blinker, reverse. The latter two are a now brainer, but the first one is slightly more complicated. The stop light is meant to come on with headlights in a slightly dimmer manner and when used as a brake light it's supposed to light up bright. There are three wires coming out from the harness and I know which one is ground, which one is stop and which ones comes on with headlights.
Problem is that the light I'm using has only 2 hookups: ground and power, so now I'm trying to come up with a simple way to make the "running" light part come on dimmer. I'm thinking about putting a resistor on the wire so that when power goes through it, the voltage would be limited and the light would not be as bright. Does that make sense? or is there another way to go about it? Oh, I considered the trailer harness setup, but it seems to be somewhat of an overkill to use it just to deak with one light problem.
 
Won't work, and you should have 4 wires for the brake, ground, park,and blinker. You need a light with three wires like a trailer light. One for park, one for stop, and one for ground. Then wire a diode in series with the stop wires on each side to keep the blinker from feading back to the other side. For the diode you'll need one rated for 12V and a higher AMP rating than the bulbs will draw. NOt shure on the cost of them anymore, but the last time I checked I think they where more than a trailer converter. Wait I just got what you where doing. You'll still need the two filiment bulb socket, but none of the other stuff. Just wire the brighter filiment for the stop, and the dimmer filiment for the park.
 
scoobyxj said:
Wait I just got what you where doing. You'll still need the two filiment bulb socket, but none of the other stuff. Just wire the brighter filiment for the stop, and the dimmer filiment for the park.

I'm hoping to avoid that as the lights I drilled the holes out for are two wire setups (I didn't think about the third wire until I was ready to start working on the wiring). Anyone seen a 2.5" round light that goes into a gromet that is 2 filament?
 
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