Back Tails/Loose Wire

Check the wiring from the license plate harness back. You may find a damaged or loose wire/connection

Wire harness in trunk. : Toyota Camry Common Electrical ...

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Ground wire coonection for tail light Camry 1999. All the lights ( license plate, tail,reverse) that are connected to the trunk are not working.... 1999 Toyota Camry.
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The license plate lights have their own separate bulbs. If you are able to replace the bulbs, that may solve your problem. If not, you may have a loose or rusted connection to the plate bulbs only. If you are able to gain access, you may want to check the condition of the harness that supplies the power to the license plate portion. Good luck and have a great day.

Sounds like a plug came loose in the trunk. If you are unable to find the loose plug, power to your license plate lights can be easily re-routed from the tail lights if necessary, with no downside. Two wires, two butt connectors, and two tap splices are all you will need to accomplish the repair.

check the wire harness in the trunk for loose connections or broken wires check ground also

Hi,
First you have to take out the one and only screw in the rear hatch door - it's where the hand pull down is you use to close the hatch.
Then you have to pop all the plastic clips all the way around the plastic door panel, trying not to pull them out from the frame . If you do pull out the white plastic plugs from the frame you better make certain you take them off the plastic housing and insert them back into their frame holes - or you will never get the housing back on.

Once you have the housing loose disconnect the inside tail gate light wire to remove the whole thing. Then you have to remove 7 to 8 nuts from the back of entire License plate, back up bulb housing using a deep socket to get in there. Work it loose from the rear of the car and it will come out just enough to work on the lights.
This is tricky since the screw mounts don't give you much room to work with.

Once you have the license plate and back up bulb frame loose you will see the two housings for the license plate bulbs on top.

Slide out the license plate bulb lens and twist the bulb connection to remove the bulbs.
Replace both of them - you don't want to do this again in a month when the other one blows.

OPTIONAL:
Once you take out the bulbs you might see that the housing is melted where the bulb wanted to burn through. Drill two small holes one is each end of the housing before I put everything back together to release some of the heat.

Reverse the whole process to put everything back together. It's not easy.
Make sure you insert the cables through the opening for the hatch handle or it will kink and not work properly.

The bulbs come in a two pack of cost $4.95 .

Take care

Check around in that trunk for loose wires. Especially a grounding wire at the taillights. Sometimes in our hurry to shove stuff in the trunk it's possible to disconnect, or cut a wire... If you've got the 'cyclops" light working on the hatch, then there's power back there, just look around and I'm sure you locate a loose or damaged wire... trace them back from the taillights and look close for cuts, frays, damage, loose connection..

I have a 98 Camry and was having problems with tail lights and fuses. I kept blowing a fuse which was making my tail lights not work. I tried paying very close attention to when they would be working and all the sudden not be working. I know it sounded funny, but I told my mechanic that it seemed if I used my trunk, my fuse would blow. Come to find out, the wire was touching the hinges of my trunk. So when I popped my trunk and closed it, it blew my fuse every time.

If you have good tail lights, you should have a working license light. Take a piece of wire and touch the lamp socket body to a non-painted nut or bolt on the body. If no help, tug on the wire coming out of the back of the socket. It should not pull free. If it seems ok, trace the wire back to one or the other of the tail lights--there is likely a loose connection at the tail light or a junction point.

I had the same problem on a 2008 Civic. It turns out it was a poor wiring harness design. The harness was being pinched as the trunk lid opens and closes. In the wire bundle, there is a crimp connector where 3 wires connects to 1 wire. The 1 wire in the crimp came loose. I reconnected everything with a new crimp connector, taped up the wire loom, and everything worked once again.