Last Friday as my dad tried to start our 97 Camry, the R indicator lighted up even before he shifted into reverse. Soon afterwards the CEL came on. He had me look at it and I found that the back-up light doesn't light properly and the tail lights on the trunk went all haywire. Sometimes the plate light but NOT tail light would come on, or everything would come on, or the R indicator would come on as soon as tail lights are on.
Although the car is mechanically just fine - it starts fine, shifts fine, runs backwards - I decided we have to down it and deploy Little Pig instead, much to dad's chagrin.
I took out the trunk tail/back up light housing and checked for burnt bulbs and shorts. Nothing wrong there. But after I unplug them and checked the pins, I got a short between the tail light positive and backup light positive pins.
I thought there's a short so I torn down the trunk wire harness and check, but that checks out too.
Then I traced the wire to the instrument panel junction box (don't worry, I know where it is
) and pulled the plug that served the trunk. With the wiring diagram I downloaded long before the legal storm hit I located the exact pins for tail and reverse, and I found another short!
Later tests done across two afternoons in -10C
seems to indicate that tail light and back-up light circuits are interfering with each other. This points to either a short in the junction box (that I then have to remove and take indoor to study), or the wire from there to the trunk. Any opinions?
Linear Mode
