Calling All Wiring Gurus

[bcoke]

Originally Posted by RustyPile

That orange wire along with the white one is the dome and courtesy light circuit. Orange being the feed, white the ground. The orange wire is always hot and goes to the brake light switch and all the bulbs. The white wire on the brake light switch goes to the turn signal switch. The other white wire on the courtesy lights goes to the headlight switch and door switches. These 2 white wires are not tied together, they are totally different circuits. Twisting the headlight switch knob activates the dome ground (white wire) and turns on the light. Opening a door switches the white wire to ground and turns on those lights.

Ah had no idea that the courtesy lights and door switches were stock! That's cool - they haven't worked since I bought the truck and since the hot line from the radio was tied in, it had me thinking that everything involved was after market.

I'll save all the connectors / switches but I'd like to try to delete this for now for simplicity's sake (and because I already took out the door switches and most of the courtesy light wiring).

How would I take out the dome / courtesy light circuit without messing up the brake lights or the headlight switch?....cut the orange at the fuse box, leaving the tail that goes to the headlight switch? hmmm but that would cut the break light switch....

Originally Posted by RustyPile

The first item in your electrical toolbox should be a proper wiring diagram. If you don't have one, it's available as a free download at the top of this forum.

Thanks for the tip! I downloaded this one today from the forum (https://imgur.com/a/Yfjpeqv). Definitely helpful...I'm honestly still coming up to speed on how to make sense of it all. This exercise has helped though! Tracing orange wires all over the place