1991 Ls400 Tail Light Failure Sensor - Nichrome Sensor Repair

[ForbesZ]

Hey!

I'm a Lexus newbie and I have a technical question. I recently got a 1991 LS400 from my uncle (who bought it new in 1991) and it had a trailer hitch and wiring harness on it. I know my uncle towed around his little box trailer on and off to Home Depot and stuff for many years, but on Tuesday I found that his trailer must have had very few running lights on it because the nichrome wire in the tail light failure sensor overheated and turned the printed circuit board black when I made a 2-hour drive with my trailer. It also lifted a few traces and caused the tail lights to not work (the lights on the trunklid, brake lights, and turn signals were fine). I replaced the burnt nichrome wire with a piece of regular solid copper wire to get the running lights working again (which it did just fine), but the tail light failure sensor thinks the tail lights are burnt out because the copper wire is obviously different from the nichrome wire.

Does anyone know what I can do to replace the nichrome wire? Can I put in a power resistor, resistor bridge, or something else? If so what size and configuration of resistors are needed? If not, what can I do to bypass it other than electric tape over the dashboard light?

I'm not trying to modify the failure sensor to accommodate the load of the trailer lights, I just want to get it back to original working condition. For the trailer lights, I installed a module that isolates the trailer lights from the car lights and uses a separate 12-volt feed to power the light bulbs and doesn't require the additional current to come through the failure module as it did before. I really should have checked that before connecting my trailer, but I didn't.

Many thanks for any help!!