Scamp 13' taillight weirdness

[Frank M]

Hi all, I have three questions.

The first is that my right blinker signal won't blink unless my foot is on the brake pedal. I don't know where to begin to try and troubleshoot that one.

Second concerns the brightness of my taillights. My exterior convenience light that is connected directly to the Scamp battery is bright as all get-out, but my taillight bulbs aren't nearly as bright. Any thoughts?

Third, there are two taillight bulbs. The lower dual-intensity bulb seems to serve as parking light, running light, brake-light and turn signal, but the upper bulb doesn't do anything. What is the upper bulb for? Is this thing wired correctly?

TIA

[Joe Z]

Sounds like a ground problem and or tailight corrosion..... my first guess because both tailights seem to have a problem is that the camper ground at the frame is not making good contact and second see if the plug at the tow vehicle has a good ground on the tow vehicle end..... whenever you have problems like your talkin about it's most times a ground problem that will cause all weird things like that...
You can test the tailght corrosin by simply putting on your four ways and parking lights at the same time and then jiggle the bulbs on the tailight and spray a little wd 40 or clean with sandpaper..... but i really think i would check the ground at the plug on the tow vehicle first.
The two part bulb is simply running lights on the smaller and brake/blinker on the larger filament and when there is no ground it will cause the situation you are talking about on only one section of the bulb.
Run a test lead from the casing of the bulb to a clean part of the frame just for a test and it may work then..... theres usually a ground wire up front on the frame and can be broken off easily which would also cause your problem
Joe

[D Tharp]

I have the same brightness problem on my 2000 SCAMP 16.
I have been trying to find LED tail lights to install in the rear.
The second bulb on my trailer is a back-up light.
I also think you have a ground problem.
Grounds can do all kinds of strange problems.
DAVE

[Frank M]

Thanks for the suggestions on the ground problem, I will try to track it down.

It's possible that the second bulb is for backup, but its not under a white lens, its under the same red lens as the dual intensity bulb, but I will check it out.

As for LED's I've just recently tried some 19-LED replacement bulbs (type 1257 I believe) from superbrightleds.com, but I was disappointed. No brighter than my old bulbs, and they also direct the light in one direction only, making it even worse. I am considering trying their 1.5"square led flat panel-type bulbs with 36 LEDs...but not cheap!