Marker lights electrical mystery

[Fishtank]

I seem to have an electrical mystery on my hands here. I'm hoping the wizards, TardisDeli, will have some input here.

About 2 weeks ago I was rummaging around behind my dash trying to figure out the 3 sets of driving lights that came on my van, of which I recently ended up removing one set. While I was back there I came across a plug that was disconnected from an extra driving light switch on the dash, I thought "This looks simple enough". Turns out this extra switch wasn't for another set of driving lights, but instead, turned on the marker lights on the van and it also activated the one extra back-up light that was attached to the rear bumper. Now I could turn on my marker lights using the normal switch on the steering column and this extra switch. GREAT RIGHT?

Not so much... I have recently lost function of the marker lights via the steering column switch, this also includes the instrument panel lights (which are still needing replacement). On top of that, when I turn on the extra switch to get marker lights, I get a draw of 0.5 - 0.8 volts on the voltmeter, which is way more than turning on my high and low beam lights at the same time. Now the only way to turn on my marker lights is via the extra switch that was originally disconnected.

My plan is to disconnect the extra switch and start tracing wires and fuses. Worse comes to worse I'll completely remove the auxiliary wiring and start from scratch.

Just looking for input from others that may have run into something similar.

[mararmeisto]

It seems the Japanese wire their vehicles a bit different than ours, and when we make these JDMs compliant with DRL there are any number of permutations as to how that can be done.

For the most part, JDMs are wired such that the fog or auxiliary lights will over-ride (or work independently of) the low beams. That is, if the low beams are on, when the fogs are switched on, the low beams switch off. The fogs and auxiliary lights also turn on the marker lights and dashboard lights, so if the main headlights are off, these lights will come on with the other lights.

In North American cars, this is no longer the case: the fogs are supposed to 'supplement' the main headlights, which for anyone living in coastal areas prone to fog this is not always the best case (white lights in fog don't really help the situation at all).

So, and this is me speculating here, it sounds like the factory fogs were disconnected from the dashboard switch, and extra lamps were wired directly - hence the extra switch on your dash. When inspected in this country, a lot of shops are just chopping or disconnecting the 'extra' lights (because of the way they function independent of the main headlights). Some then go the 'easy' route and wire up the white marker lights as DRL (saves on installing a module), but then there can be sequencing issues like you're describing. Especially since you've reconnected that plug.

Finally, if you had lights, and now you don't, you might have cooked something in the steering column switch or popped a fuse (which is possible because you've got so many lights going through the factory switch). It's common in the L300s, but I've not yet heard of a cooked column unit in an L400 (probably due to the employment of switching relays instead of direct feeds).

Also, your indication that you're reading X amount of amps on your voltmeter is discouraging - I'm hoping you only mean that you call the multimeter a 'voltmeter' and you were in fact reading amps on the ampere setting. If you hook up a circuit to read amps on while selected to the volts setting, you'll toast your multimeter.

Amps cannot be read in parallel to a circuit, it must be read in series (unless you have an inductive ammeter, but that's another topic).

It's too bad you don't live closer to Jay's Electrical Wundershop!

[TardisDeli]

When you say you found a disconnected light switch do you mean a after market switch or a original mitsubishi switch ? On the L300 there are three fuses for the lights one for low beam,one for high beam, and one for marker/gauge lights. So i would check all your fuses.A neat thing we discouvered recently on Sergy's L400 is if you disconnect the hazard light switch you lose the turn signals. So it maybe somthing weird like that. Mr. Smith if you so choose to do this mission good luck ( as the cassete tape burns).

[Fishtank]

Thanks mararmeisto, appreciate your post. I fixed my grammar on my original post, you're right in assuming that my voltage is reading on my voltmeter and not my ammeter. Unfortunately the installation of a DRL module is not in the equation as my DRL's were installed by Mardy and he doesn't use a module from what I understand.

Tardis, the switch is a Mitsu stock switch and connector on the left side of the steering column.

I ended up tracking it down to a simple fuse, which was the best case scenario. Now just to figure out why the fuse blew. As a possible connection, my power window fuse blew last week as well... Things that make you go Hmmmmm... I will continue to run with the "bad switch" disconnected and see if there is any blown fuse result, then I will try hooking it up again and troubleshoot that way.

Thanks for the input.

[MardyDelica]

hi,
try to see other wire maybe they connected to alarm or back up light sensor.
the Led DRL i used, did connect it separately so it wont contribute the problem.
maybe other wiring that they put it together and over load it.
hope u can fix it.
cheers;