I’ve discovered that my left rear tail light circuit board is done. My right side works well (all bulbs work for headlights, brake, turn signal, backup light, etc.), so I swapped that board to the left side, and everything worked on that side (which is good as I thought maybe the wiring harness was bad). So I need a new circuit board. I don’t want to buy this in a junkyard as I’ve already done it 4 years ago, so I actually have one extra circuit board (that has problems, too). Granted you save a lot of money, but you also take the chance of getting a bad electrical part. I looked it up online and pretty much found this exact board. Autoparts Warehouse has 3 different part numbers, one is $35, and two others (both different part numbers) for $60. How do I tell which is the correct one? I have to say the all look the same. I guess I could buy from NAPA, but it may take a while to get the part. I happen to know my local Chevy Dealer sells it for something like $100, and I don’t want to pay this.
If you don’t “want to pay” you are leaving it up to fate. It boggles my mind that folks can invest thousands of dollars on the purchase of a precision machine that took millions of dollars to engineer and then never expect to have to pay a dime to keep it running.
Perhaps if you get a bit clever you can repair the board, what is the issue with the board besides “it does not work”?
I was wondering about that, but I looked closely, and it’s pretty much a throwaway part. Each socket is pretty much sealed. The two boards (they really aren’t circuit boards, just a board with 4 sockets inline) have two faulty sockets. When I turn the headlights on, the top and bottom sockets turn on. When I hit the brakes, the top light should light up, but it doesn’t. Also, when I hit the left turn signal, the second socket down should flash on and off, but it doesn’t. Both seem to have the same issue. One is the original part, the other is a part I bought (with the big red tail light cover) for $35 at a junkyard 4 years ago. Like I mentioned above, I took the right circuit board and plugged it into the left wire harness and everything worked just fine, which told me that the left wire harness was fine, but the two other boards were faulty.
I looked closer at the description at Autoparts Warehouse and noticed the $35 item ($40 w/shipping) is the correct item as are the other two. The online store sells this model in three different aftermarket brands with one at $80, one at $60 and the one I bought at $35.
“If you don’t “want to pay” you are leaving it up to fate.”
Please tell me when and where I said I didn’t want to pay a dime for a part to keep it running? If you read the thread, you’ll see I wrote that I didn’t want to buy another used part as I might get a faulty one. I was basically asking how to tell which part was the correct one for my specific van. I looked closer and found out that all three were the correct part. I decided to buy the cheaper part vs. the more expensive aftermarket parts or the genuine GM part. Why pay twice the price for an aftermarket part that was probably produced in the same country as the cheaper part (I’m willing to bet both were made in China). Also, why should I pay $100 for a genuine Chevy part when the original part died on me around 50k miles (I replaced it with one from a salvage yard)?
When something like this (especially a safety item like a lightbulb or socket or lens) breaks, I hustle to try to get everything up and running as fast as I can. I do like to save money by trying to fix it myself (this is an easy do-it-yourself job). My Chevy dealer recently quoted me a price for a front headlight. $85 is way too much to pay for labor and a $15 replacement lightbulb (maybe the AC Delco part is $20 at the Dealership?). There is absolutely no sense in paying that kind of money for labor when you don’t have to.