I''m trying to get a new tailgate wired up for the 88 245. I thought I had all the wiring down pretty well. BUT...

Long story short, I currently have everything hooked up. Passenger side harness was all color coded, driver side more involved due to some previous repairs and the wires didn't match. Now that I've got everything hooked up, I've noticed that all the wires have continuity with the body of the car and every wire on the driver side now has continuity with the rear hatch center light. That can't be right... right? I'm confused as to what could be going on. I hate electronics stuff...

For example, If I hook the wires up on the drivers side to a 12 V battery source right now, one of them causes the corner lights and the rear center light to come on, and the rest of them cause the rear center light to come on??? The hatch has not been mounted to the car yet, but I don't see why that would be a problem.

Please advise!

Thanks.

 

is the tailgate itself grounded to the car when you're doing these tests? floating grounds will do what you describe.

 

How exactly do I know if the tailgate is grounded? It is not yet mounted... that could be it pierce. I'll go mount that thing up and see what happens at that point. Has been frustrating to say the least...

Thanks

 

there may be a black or brown heavy gauge wire in the harness that grounds them, I dunno. I thought all the tailgate wires ran through the hinges, so I'm not sure how you connected them if its not mounted

 

Well...

Tailgate is back on. This solved most of the issues. And created a new one. When testing all the components of the tailgate, I noticed that all were working except the center brake light. When I press the brakes, the rear defroster lights up and stays on as well as making the regular rear corner brake lights brighten up. I think this is due to the terrible ground of the left (driver's side) which was completely severed before I started this project. I attempted a (crappy) repair and thought it couldn't be worse, but it appears that it is. I'm going to just unhook that ground again and see if the problem resolves. The passenger side hinge wiring actually looks very good including the ground....


I'll report back...

 

Also, why 2 grounding wires from chassis to tailgate? Redundancy, or are both needed?

 

the ground needs to carry ALL the current from the various lamps that are on at once, and the wiper and defroster.