Xander,
I had a similar problem with my daughter's 2003 Dodge Neon. I copied my
post detailing how I fixed her can and will paste it here in hopes that it might
help you or someone else:
I ended up completely re-wiring everything on the same circuit as the
instrument panel lights and tail lamps. The wire in the harness was black with
a yellow stripe and it was the hot wire for the instrument panel, tail lamps,
license plate light, front parking lights and the amber marker lights on the front
fenders. At each of the eight connections, I cut the black with yellow wire,
leaving enough to strip and connect to the new 18ga wire that I pulled
throughout the car. For each connection, I used heat shrink connections.
Additionally, even though all of the lights worked after re-wiring the hot side, I
spliced into the ground wire for each connection (other than the instrument
panel lights) and ran a good, solid ground to the car body for each of the seven
connections. All of the ground connections may have been overkill, but I was
tired of messing with those specific electrical problems and didn't want to leave
anything to chance. The toughest part of the whole thing was pulling wire
through the firewall. I finally used a stiff-bladed fish tape and poked a hole
through a rubber plug in the firewall and pulled my wire through. I ran all of the
wire under the hood, under the carpet and in the trunk through split plastic wire
looms to protect against wear in the insulation of the wiring and to guard
against future shorts. As I said, I was really tired of messing with Dodge Neon
wiring. So far so good. I'm sure that a real mechanic would have done this
much better than I did and my methods may provide a good laugh for a few
folks. That's ok by me. In the end, all of the lights function again, and, since I
"work cheap," the final repair bill was about $200 ($75 on ebay for the
multifunction switch; $90 to the local Dodge parts department for the 20 pin
plug; and about $35 for 18 ga wire, tape, plastic wire loom and shrink
connector). Hopefully, all of this detail will help someone out by going through
how an old Paramedic resuscitated some of the lights on a 2003 Neon.
Richard
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