Tail light is out, but will signal

When I turn my lights on, my drivers side tail light will not come on; however, it will flash when I signal. The brake light works and all the passenger side lights work fine. I switched out the bulb and it had no effect. Can someone please give me some advice what to check first? Thanks!

Brian

Check the tail light wire for powe and or possible poor bulb to tail light socket contact.

I second Alan Brian; these Oriental repro assemblies are so bad that you have to be on top of them to make them work. I had a similar problem in my right side tailight and I fixed it by moving the bulb around and using some dielectric grease, which seems to displace moisture at the socket. I've done that to all my car's light assemblies.

Tried the dielectric grease and it didn't help. Can someone tell me which wire from the switch controls the tail light function?

It shouldn't be a big problem; check the tension in the bulb socket or the bulb itself (sometimes one of the filaments breaks while the other one's fine and you only get one function).

Brian:

Since the driver's side works, you are getting power to the end on the tail light circuit.
On the VS harness, power to the rear tail lights and license plate light travels through the smaller (thinner gauge) white wire from the headlight switch, runs to the passenger side tail light via the same white wire, splits off to the the license plate light and continues on to the passenger side tail light.

Remove the bulb and use a test light on the contacts.

No test light?...Then use the bulb you have removed as the test light.

If you still have a problem I'll pull out the VS wiring diagram I have, but I am 99% sure you'll find a bad tail light socket contact, bad wire connection at the driver's side tail light socket or a partically bad bulb with one of the filaments at fault.

Alan

Thanks guys. I took everything apart and cleaned it thouroughly and it works now. There was a little corrosion in the socket.

Brian

That's good news....now put some more dielectric grease in there.......