Tail Light Harness Repair

[PDXk5]

Evening,
I decided to repair my rear tail light harness (bought a repro one but didn’t like the connector for the tail light housing). My original harness had a trailer light harness spliced into it. Very ugly splice job, hence my desire to make it better.

Anyway, I cutout the crimp connectors, cut back the insulation, twisted the bare wires together and soldered the dark green back together, the yellow back together and am left with the brown wires.

I’m a bit confused on how it would have been from the factory. Previous owner spliced all the brown together in one connection. I’m assuming that’s not how it was original.

I looked at the wiring schematic and it looks like there should be:
One brown wire going to left tail light and a brown wire extending from the left tail light to the license plate light.
One brown wire going to right tail light.

I have two brown wires coming from the left and three from the right (one is the license plate light but the other two continue to the passenger side lights).

When I alligator clip the brown wire from the plug to the 5 brown wire connector everything works but I don’t want to put it back together like that if that’s not the correct way to have the brown wires (which I’m guessing it’s not).

Thanks for your input.