Help! Turn signal / reverse light failure in 81 after LED switch

[Voodoo81]

Hi guys:

just got my 81 back from its 55 week stay at the body shop. They did beautiful body work but screwed up a lot of stuff to the point where I told them I'd deal with the electrical mess they created. They suggested LED tail lights (all 4 red with reverse lights in a license plate frame) and installed them, along with LED front turn signals.

All 4 rear lights turn on with the headlights. The outside 2 lights in the rear (left and right) are the brake lights and they work. However, when turning on the hazard lights or turn signals, nothing (none of the rear 4 lights or front 2 turn signals) work. The reverse light doesn't work at all either.

to make matters worse, a single right rear tail light (the right most which is also a brake light) intermittently comes on when the ignition is off and drains the battery. I don't know what the heck is going on.

i gave the body shop an electronic flasher which I assume they installed correctly, but to be perfectly honest i dont trust a thing they did electrically and I haven't done any electrical work on this car. I don't even know where the electronic flasher should have been installed. I have the shop and assembly manual and was planning on spending Labor Day weekend figuring stuff out, but this is a plea for someone who has been in this situation before for a couple of pointers so I can get started without spending a day looking at diagrams and reinventing the wheel.

thanks

 

[Antz81]

LEDs are a smaller load than the lights so if everything is connected correctly they should be working without causing anything to fail.
I'm sure you've done this correctly but I'll ask a few obvious questions first.
LEDs are polar so they do have to be connected the right way (+ to +, - to ground) are all of the LEDs connected correctly?

With the reverse LED are you getting voltage to and from the reverse switch?

At the Tail lights that should be acting as a turn signal as well how many wires do you have connected to them?
There wasn't any additional relays installed?
On the turn signal LEDs were there any resistor packs installed with them? These are quite important as they provide more of a load for the flasher.

The flasher that you gave them should have been installed at the fuse panel. there should be two there. The one at the top left for the hazards, the one at the bottom right is the turn signal.

The tail light coming on when the car is parked sounds like a fault in the wiring. There shouldn't be a power at the rear lights for this to happen.

 

[frank_nesta]

One addition thought. There is a ground at the rear of the car. A black wire that ties to the frame. Make sure it is a good solid ground.

Corvette electrical problems are usually ground related, aging wiring does not help, and body shops are not usually very good at electrical wiring. Also just look at what they did and make sure it looks right. I added LED tail lights to mine and did not need the special flasher. I just added the additional light socket and wired them the same as the stock ones. Make sure they have a ground hook up to the additional tail light sockets.

 

[Peer81]

I agree with the previous two members! After the body off I changed everything (were i could) to LED. I remember that the flasher needed a elec flasher and some extra load on the flasher. What you can do is change back to normal bulbs and see if it works. After that change one by one to LED and see where it goes wrong.

Greetings Peter