Autotrail running lights

[mal100]

All the offside (orange) side running lights have gone out. Visual inspection of the bulbs appears to show them to be OK. Is there a fuse that controls this circuit and if so which one? :-D

[Derek Uzzell]

Welcome to the Out&AboutLive forums.

 

I'd guess that the fuse that protects the orange marker-lights on the offside of your motorhome will be the same fuse that protects the side-light in the offside headlamp unit and the offside tail-light.

 

Auto-Trail has bulit motorhomes based on Fiat, Mercedes and Renault chassis. If there's nothing that will help in the manufacturer's handbook for the chassis on which your motorhome is based, you'll need to say which model of Auto-Trail motorhome you own, when it was built and which chassis it's based on.

[mal100]

It's a Frontier Cherokee on a Fiat chassis (2010). The front and rear side lights are working so I would guess it would be a diffrent circuit

[Keithl]

My guess would be that it's a wiring fault probably where the marker lights are joined to the side light wiring. Try locating the wires behind the side markers and work out which way they run and then where they connect to the side light wiring. I would start at the rear lights if I had to make a choice. Possibly look behind the offside rear light (or from underneath) and try to find the wiring.

I would be very surprised if they where on a separate circuit from the sidelights.

 

Hope this helps,

Keith.

 

Edit, to add you can get wiring diagrams from the Sargent Electrical website (but only up to 2009 unfortunately, but it will help with wire colours)... Link.

[mal100]

Thanks - I'll try that

[Derek Uzzell]

If it were assumed that a similar circuit/fusing arrangement were used for the nearside marker-lights as the offside ones, then removing relevant fuses until the (working) nearside marker-lights no longer illuminated should reveal whether or not each set of marker-lights had a separate circuit/fuse.

 

If the nearside marker-lights alone stopped working when a particular fuse was removed, then it would be reasonable to assume those lights would have a separate circuit/fuse: if the nearside marker-lights stopped working plus other lights (say the nearside front side-light and rear tail-light) when a particular fuse was removed, then the nearside marker-lights should be on the same circuit/fuse as the other lights that had ceased illuminating. Once that had been established, a fair guess could be made as to whether the fault with the offside marker-lights was wiring-based or fuse-based.

 

However, the following forum discussions indicate that the above simplistic diagnostic approach may well not work with Fiat X250 vehicles:

 

http://www.fiatforum.com/ducato/291221-x250-side-light-fuses.html

 

http://www.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/Motorhomes/Motorhome-Matters/Ducato-2008-9-sidelights-fuse-/19485/?

 

I note that side-marker-light kits are available for commercial-vehicle body-builders and it's possible that Auto-Trail has used one of these kits when adding the marker-lights. The lights will be Auto-Trail additions, so it shouldn't be expected that they'll be referred to specifically in Fiat literature. (My Hobby motorhome has side-marker-lights, but there's no reference to them in the Ford Transit handbook and I don't know where their power-supply comes from - thought I doubt there's a separate fuse and it wouldn't surprise me if the lights' power-supply was via a connection to the tail-lights' wiring.) As Keith advises, checking the cabling route from the marker-lights should be the first step.

 

(In this current forum thread http://tinyurl.com/c5tqm98 crbtaylor says that he asked Auto-Trail for technical advice and the company was helpful. Suggest you do the same if the cause of fault proves difficult to identify.)

[mal100]

Thank you for your help - it is much appreciated.