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.

[randy500]

That splice on the brown wire is factory.

[PDXk5]

Originally Posted by randy500

That splice on the brown wire is factory.

Hmm. Thanks Randy.

I was just looking at the repro harness and its wrapped at that spot, but I was starting to think it was spliced like that, since there are two brown wires running to each side and it splits right after the connector hub. You just confirmed it.

I’ll solder the brown wire from the plug to that connector and rewrap it with harness tape tomorrow.

[dmjlambert]

I had to do the same type of harness clean up on mine because it had a gnarly mess of old trailer connector stuff. I used solder connections and heat-shrink tubing. Auto parts stores have a plug-in trailer wire harness, it makes things much neater.

[Andy4639]

Originally Posted by dmjlambert

I had to do the same type of harness clean up on mine because it had a gnarly mess of old trailer connector stuff. I used solder connections and heat-shrink tubing. Auto parts stores have a plug-in trailer wire harness, it makes things much neater.

Yes those plug in connector do make it much easier but they have only been available for about 10-15 years though. Most of these trucks where bought 50 years ago and they did what they had to make them work!Most farmers didn't care about looks, they cared about working.

[PDXk5]

Yes, I purchased one of those plug in trailer harness pig tails too. I Have it plugged in and it will be easy trailer connection for future use. I had to stop my tidying up the OEM harness to get some more solder and soldering iron cleaning materials. Wish I could have gone picked it up at local store but stayed at home to keep sheltered in place and ordered via Amazon. Hope to have what I need to finish next weekend.