Hey guys. Hoping someone can shed some light on how this works...

I've inherited my dads '99 Mazda. It did did not come with the towing package, but he had a reciever and a 7 way plug installed. He used one of the plug in adapters to convert down the the flat 4 when he needed it & thats what I'm having trouble with.

The blinkers work... but the running lights don't. With a voltmeter I can pick up slight voltage, but only like 2 or three volts. I thought maybe it was just a bad connection between that plug in converter that converts the 7 to a flat 4, but no thats what I get if I pull the adapapter out and measures the pins behind it. If I follow the wire backward, it quickly hits a little squarish junction plug and from there back it looks factory. I know that rangers come with flat 4 connectors on them, right?

A friend says that it may simply be that it does not have the converter that allows vehicles with amber in the tail lights to work... could that be so?

 

Have you checked for power when the brakes are on to see if they are the same wires as the directionals. the four pins should be (I think) Running lights, Brake/directionals, R/L/ground.
There isn’t much more to it.
If there is no ground make sure you get one.