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Reverse Lights staying on

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Old Sep 11, 2024 | 09:06 AM
  #1  
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Reverse Lights staying on

Does anyone know how to fix my reverse lights stuck on? I have a 1984 f250, with a Borg Warner 4 speed manual transmission, I wasn’t doing this yesterday so this is a new occurrence.
 
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Old Sep 11, 2024 | 02:43 PM
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first thing i would do is unplug the reverse light switch on the trans. if the lights turn off, replace the switch.
 
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Old Sep 19, 2024 | 10:02 PM
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Originally Posted by tjc transport
first thing i would do is unplug the reverse light switch on the trans. if the lights turn off, replace the switch.
I have replaced my reverse light switch and the reverse lights are still stuck on, could it be because they are LED’s
 
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Old Sep 20, 2024 | 03:59 AM
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nope. you need to figure out why they are still powered.
did the lights turn off when you unplugged the switch?
 
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Old Sep 20, 2024 | 11:08 AM
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Sometimes, LEDs will stay on in certain vehicles.
They take such low current compared to incandescent, that any kind of "leakage" might illuminate them. In the case of your truck, this shouldnt be a problem, however. It should be a simple series circuit, but maybe someone has spliced into the harness for some reason. First thing I'd do is put incandescent load across the lights. If they're the hardwired type, then simply either solder some wire to a couple of 1156 bulbs and temporarily connect them across the LEDs, or use some plain old sockets for the bulbs as well. If the load from the incandescent fixes the problem, you can either put incandescent Back Up Lights in, or trace every inch of the wires from lights and switch. My 1990 speed LEDs work OK.
My Mercedes w163 ML has a very slight leakage and backup lights glow ever so faintly...looks kunda cool.
Using a DVM versus a test light that pulls a couple of amps can give different results when doing stuff on vehicles. I have a standard 1156 bulb in a socket for stuff like this. Soldered large clip to side of socket and put a 3' lead with a sharp needle test probe on it. Clip it to ground, the just poke it into stuff. You can also use a dual filament 1157 bulb, but one filament is the marker/tail and the other is the the stop/turn, which is the same bright filament as an 1156.
BTW, my 1990 RABS module was fooled by the LED brake lights in my F350, and always gave the RABS light on the dash. I ended up putting a 12ohm, 50 watt resistor, connected in parallel to the brake light circuit at the pedal and ground. I also went back to and incandescent RABS bulb in the dash cause it would always glow despite there being no error in the system. Also had to stick with incandescent for the charge light on the dash because it would stay fully illuminated even though charging was fine. One could calculate the resistance in parallel to the dash LEDs to use them in place of the small incandescent, but I've got so many things to do, I didn't bother....
 
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Old Sep 21, 2024 | 09:28 AM
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For some reason the engineers at Ford setup the ABS light to come on when one or more taillights is not functioning. I have a flatbed on my '92 and noticed that will LED taillights the ABS light would reliably illuminate at about 36mph and RABS would not function. Finally figured out that I needed to wire in a resistor to the taillight circuit because the low draw of LEDs fools the simple-minded system into thinking the taillights are not working. Easy fix but not exactly an intuitive process for me anyway.
 
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Old Sep 21, 2024 | 06:48 PM
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Originally Posted by tjc transport
nope. you need to figure out why they are still powered.
did the lights turn off when you unplugged the switch?
Yes, when I disconnect the switch the lights remain on
 
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Old Sep 22, 2024 | 07:18 AM
  #8  
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ok, then you have crossed wires in the reverse light circuit between the trans switch and a 12 volt power source.
 
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