Need To Wire Tail Lights The Simple/lazy Way

I've been going through my wiring and have made my way to the tail lights now. The PO had a rats nest of dead wires and questionable rigs set up that I ended up just cutting out. First of all, to test my tail light fixtures, I just hooked a 12v and ground lead to the two wires on the light and neither came on, which I can assume means the fixtures need replacing. I am now trying to figure out the simplest way to have them pop on as running lights and that's really all I'm worried about right now. I have 3 wires coming from the front of the jeep--red, yellow, and green--and then the two wires per light. Can anyone tell me what the 3 wires do/connect to? I didn't find that detail in the service manual.

Would it be a solution to connect the ground wires of the two lights and send them to a common ground, probably from the switch itself, then take the positive lead from the switch and split it to the two positive light wires? Simple as that?

 

The two wires on your lamp are not positive/negative. They take power to the dual filament bulb. Apply power to either wire, and ground the lamp housing to see the effect.

One wire from the front will be your running lights. From the headlight switch wire, go to one lamp, then continue it to the other. This will be the low wattage filament in each bulb.

The other two wires from the dash will be brake/turn - one left, one right. One goes to each lamp, separately, for the brighter bulb filament.

Trial and error with a test light or voltmeter will sort these thing out.

Effective grounding of each tail-lamp housing is important but can be done to the body or frame at each location.

 

So I can now assume I've blown them up

 

Probably not. There should have been no current flowing at all between the two lamp wires.

 

Thanks for the info, that should get me through this part.

 

yep most likely no harm done
as pete noted one wire with power supplied the light will be brighter . this one is turn and brake
other wire is running light
Right - green
Left - yellow
tail lamp - brown

 

Yellow = Left, Green = Right

 

That schematic is for a single tail-light, and without turn signals. Not correct for the OP.