Hello I have a 2014 ram 1500 v6 and I had recently crashed on to a car on the drivers side, for some reason my drivers side low beam doesn’t work and neither does my right taillight housing completely. I had checked all the fuses under the hood and none were blown. Don’t know what to do. Any ideas?
something was damaged in the crash
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Well it’s true, some wire/s somewhere seems to have gotten pinched/damaged. Find a good auto electrician in your area and have them diagnose it.
Well it can't be ignored that your accident was at the drivers side front. That's where the TIPM (Totally Integrated Power Module) is located and that the driver's side headlight and the passenger side taillight have nothing else in common except for where they get their voltage signals. The TIPM.
You probably know your TIPM as "the underhood fuse box" but it's kind of like an iceberg. The part you see from the top is just a small part of it.
You need to find somebody with a scanner which can display the codes from the TIPM. You definitely have some.
OK, my advice is on record about pulling its codes. My hands are clean so let's start hypothesizing.
Here's some views of the TIPM out of your 2014 Ram to illustrate how it's like an iceberg.
So if you look at bottom you see a bunch of connector pins. They're connector pins whose groupings are identified by letters. (A,B,C,D,E,.....) and they're connected to a circuit board inside of the TIPM.
Each individual headlight and taillight are controlled by their own drivers (transistors) in the TIPM and all of their pins are on the "C" connector. It's probably anywhere from a 10 to 20 wire connector that plugs into that group of pins.
Here, there's a couple of questions:
Was that wiring to connector "C" damaged in the accident?
Was the TIPM damaged in the accident?
Now depending on what you want to do, there's 2 ways to go about this.
You can take it to the dealer. They'll likely charge you around $150 +or - to scan the TIPM codes and WHEN (not if) they find some they'll tell you that you need a new TIPM ($1,000 + or -)
Now I don't object to the $150 diagnostic fee but if all they'll do to "diagnose" the problem is to scan for codes and then "kneejerk" into condemning the TIPM without checking the wiring AND grounds, I have a problem with that.
So, it comes down to this. Can you, or somebody you know, use a test light?
No matter how complicated this all sounds, a certain pin on the TIPM has to provide 12 volts to power a headlight or a taillight or a brake light.
So using your left (driver side) low beam for example.
It looks SOMETHING like this:
If you aren't seeing 12 volts at connector C1, Pin 4 with the low beams on, you have a TIPM problem.
Here's a video of Ivan Temnykh chasing down a lighting issue on a 2010 Dodge Caliber.
It isn't exactly the same TIPM as yours but it works the same way.
Notice how he uses expensive scanners to pull the codes and look at waveforms but in the end he diagnoses the failed TIPM with a simple test light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sXgNogjm9s
