drewet88

wow nice workaround there!

BTW if you were able to do all that, I think you would have no problem soldering. It's pretty easy--just read up some info online.

Lol thank you looking at it it did seem pretty easy, maybe I'll go to walmart and get one and see what I can do on some other things before I try soldering that little box, who knows what else can be messed up if I do it wrong.

Well I googled info on the little box and a lot of people have had it die on them and have had the same problems as me. They opened it up and resoldered, since I have no experience in soldering and a new box costs about $250, dealer only. I went to 2 junk yards but all of the little yellow boxes were gone are messed up like mine.

I started checking wires again and saw that the license plate lights still cut on so I just spliced those into the green wire that controled the running lights. I used an inline fuse 20amp and some make some nice strong connections and then protected everything with electrical tape just in case, fixed everything. Now when I turn on the headlights the running lights come on but this is just a temporary fix because bypassing the little box means the dash will not tell me if a tail light is out.

I fused it just in case I'd rather be safe than sorry and have an even bigger problem to fix.

Thanks for all your help everyone let me know any thoughts/comments you have.

I am not really sure about this model, but check to see if there is another fuse panel under the hood.

If you have a multimeter available, check the contacts in the bulb socket to make sure you are getting 12V there.

Okay I will check that tomorrow when I'll be able to get a multimeter. I checked fuses under the hood and there isn't one for the tail lights. I'm thinking it may be the lamp failure switch, I read some posts about that causing this problem and when I took it off I could hear something loose inside of it.

Done and Done. I checked the connections with the multimeter, couldn't really sleep so I just went outside with a flashlight and did it. While pressing the break pedal everything gets 12v. With the headlights on not pressing the pedals everything got 1v. I read somewhere that I should pop open the yellow box I talked about earlier because there can be a small short causing this problem. Anything else I should look at will I'm taking stuff apart?

I am not really sure about this model, but check to see if there is another fuse panel under the hood.

If you have a multimeter available, check the contacts in the bulb socket to make sure you are getting 12V there.

Okay I will check that tomorrow when I'll be able to get a multimeter. I checked fuses under the hood and there isn't one for the tail lights. I'm thinking it may be the lamp failure switch, I read some posts about that causing this problem and when I took it off I could hear something loose inside of it.

Have you checked the fuses for them?

Well if you mean the fuses under the dash then yes I checked everyone that I saw but I dont have the panel or a book so I dont know which ones to check exactly so I checked them all.

EDIT: I also followed the wires back as far as I could and found no breaks in the wires, I did however find something called a light failure its big and orange and all the wires seem to plug into it. When I unhook it I lose all tail lights.

Thats the year my grandma told me its really her car. I can run and look at the title real quick and tell you the actual year.

And the actual year is .....1990 Lexus ES 250.

I have a 93 ES250. Whenever I turn on my headlights my rear lights do not come on. They work fine when I step on the break pedal, O and I also have that annoying light on my dash saying one of my lights are out. They use to work but all of sudden they stopped. I changed all of my lights bulbs with 1157LL thats what the book at autozone said to grab.

Any suggestions?

EDIT its at 1990