LED Light Troubleshooting

[ncitro]

Dude I worked on this project a bit today, ordered the same lights as you. Did you just tie the left and right together on a particular strip? I went that route and they seem to work if I power them with straight 12v, but not off the truck. I know you've got a Dodge, but thought I'd see if you found any gotchas before I dig into a Ford issue. Powered off the truck just my regular lights work on brake and turn signal, the strips only work on running and reverse.

Looking at the Amazon listing I see it's amber for turn and red for brake, but only using five wires was not sure how they're detecting brake vs turn signal.

[Dude]

Dude I worked on this project a bit today, ordered the same lights as you. Did you just tie the left and right together on a particular strip? I went that route and they seem to work if I power them with straight 12v, but not off the truck. I know you've got a Dodge, but thought I'd see if you found any gotchas before I dig into a Ford issue. Powered off the truck just my regular lights work on brake and turn signal, the strips only work on running and reverse.

Looking at the Amazon listing I see it's amber for turn and red for brake, but only using five wires was not sure how they're detecting brake vs turn signal.

I sure did. I really like the effect it had when turning the lights on it run out to the ends from the middle. What I did was hooked up the power to the truck and hooked a light tester up on every wire and then marked the wires. I would think your wiring colors in the trailer are the same as mine, if so look at the picture I posted of where to attach the lights from the strip lights connect.

I was looking at your light mod, and what tubing did you use to clean up your wires? It looks nice.

[ncitro]

Dude thanks I think I need to break it apart and look at the wiring. I tied it into my tail lights, which are working fine, so I'm pretty sure the wiring is good, but there may be something wrong in how the LED strips came wired.

If you're asking about mine, I changed out my factory lights a few years ago to these:

Bargman 48-84-527 Double LED Taillight with Stop/Tail/Turn (Red- Black Base) https://a.co/d/5yYesYm

And I used this to hide the wires to the strips:

D-Line Cord Hider, Decorative Cable Cover Wall, Paintable Cord Concealer, Cable Raceway, Wire Covers for Cords, Hide Wires, Electrical Cable Management - 0.78in W x 0.39in H x 39in Length - White https://a.co/d/emVYCGf

[ncitro]

Dude Got it and works as advertised. Must have been a bad connection or short, I pulled one apart and reseated everything and working great now. I will post some pictures when cleaned up, but loving them so far.

[ncitro]

Dude Most strange outcome. The LED strips work fine (turn chasing from the middle, running, brake, and reverse) with the ignition off, but as soon as I turn the ignition on I lose the brake and turn signal on both sides. I checked with my meter and I am getting the same voltage at the lights regardless of whether it is running or not. All I can think of is there is some noise the engine is introducing that is tripping up the circuit in the LEDs that detects the flash for turn signal vs brake. I am going to have to scope the output and see whats going on, but we are supposed to leave for a trip Tuesday so it is going to have to wait. Its a shame, they look really nice when they are working.

[howson]

ncitro

I suspect your meter is "lying" to you. When testing the negative lead on your meter is attached to a good ground thus the meter "sees" 12V.

What I think is going on is with the ignition on the wiring is not "seeing" the truck's negative (in the 7-pin plug). A quick check could be done by stringing a negative wire from the LEDs to the negative connection coming from the Bargman plug. (I forget if you have a MICTUNING box setup.)

Could be wrong...but easy thing to check.

Howard

[ncitro]

ncitro

I suspect your meter is "lying" to you. When testing the negative lead on your meter is attached to a good ground thus the meter "sees" 12V.

What I think is going on is with the ignition on the wiring is not "seeing" the truck's negative (in the 7-pin plug). A quick check could be done by stringing a negative wire from the LEDs to the negative connection coming from the Bargman plug. (I forget if you have a MICTUNING box setup.)

Could be wrong...but easy thing to check.

Howard

That's possible, but the regular square Bargman LED lights continue to work fine through all this, and they're all paralleled together. My next step when I have time is to run a long lead up to the trucks trailer connection and tie directly to the feed there (ground and turn signal). I do have the Mictunning box.

[Dude]

ncitrosorry your running into issues, and howson is right. The ground plays tricks on you, and it sounds like some testing is in order in. Keep us posted what your finding turn out to be.

[ncitro]

Some updates on my progress. While we were on our trip out west I had a fuel line issue in the truck and had to have a buddy move my rig with his GMC. The lights worked fine for him. A few weeks ago my in laws upgraded to a fifth wheel, while setting up their hitch and in bed wiring I hooked him up to my trailer and they ran fine on his F150. Today I grabbed a buddy at work who carries a scope and we threw it on the truck to see what was going on and as I expected the waveform was not pure DC for the turn signal outputs. The tail light (which works) was clean DC, but the turn signals are pulsing during their on state. My guess here is the LED strips are setup somehow to detect the a pulse to differentiate between the turn signals and brake lights (amber vs red on the strip) and the pulsing "on state" is messing them up. I could resolve this with a set of relays, but I am going to steal Country Campers Furrion adapter for his camera to see if that fixes the issue.

Fingers crossed.

[Dude]

Some updates on my progress. While we were on our trip out west I had a fuel line issue in the truck and had to have a buddy move my rig with his GMC. The lights worked fine for him. A few weeks ago my in laws upgraded to a fifth wheel, while setting up their hitch and in bed wiring I hooked him up to my trailer and they ran fine on his F150. Today I grabbed a buddy at work who carries a scope and we threw it on the truck to see what was going on and as I expected the waveform was not pure DC for the turn signal outputs. The tail light (which works) was clean DC, but the turn signals are pulsing during their on state. My guess here is the LED strips are setup somehow to detect the a pulse to differentiate between the turn signals and brake lights (amber vs red on the strip) and the pulsing "on state" is messing them up. I could resolve this with a set of relays, but I am going to steal Country Campers Furrion adapter for his camera to see if that fixes the issue.

Fingers crossed.

Some time back I recall a topic about needing to purchase an Adapter that plugs into your current plug-in setup and allows the newer trucks to function properly with trailer lights. I wanted to say E-trailer had that part. I did some digging and wasn't able to find those posts. Maybe this is what's happening to you. I'll do some more digging, I'm sure its because I'm not putting in the right search wording.

[ncitro]

Some time back I recall a topic about needing to purchase an Adapter that plugs into your current plug-in setup and allows the newer trucks to function properly with trailer lights. I wanted to say E-trailer had that part. I did some digging and wasn't able to find those posts. Maybe this is what's happening to you. I'll do some more digging, I'm sure its because I'm not putting in the right search wording.

Yeah that's the Furrion part I'm going to "borrow"from Country Campers at the rally to see if it fixes it. I'm hopeful, but concerned it may be designed to only address the running light line (since that's what's used for the Furrion camera. We will see, if so it'll be an easy fix.