I took a look in the book, and it lists with plastic and without plastic valance. I have never seen a plastic valance on a 9 so I don't have a clue. On my car, it has a ground wire on each side in the front of the core. Trace both sides of the harness in front and verify that you have them grounded, and it doesn't hurt to verify ground contact, instead of looking at and seeing the wire bolted to metal.
The tailights ground to the chassis through the metal retaing clips; as a result, the housing must provide ground to the chassis.
The lights are squirrely, at least, on the 9. If you have a wire crossed on the socket or one socket doesn't ground, the combinations of malfunctions are endless. The problem might be with the tailight ground, but let's take this one step at a time.
You wrote: I noticed that on the drivers side FRONT that I have two wires connecting into one connector that was left hanging.
What do you mean left hanging? Describe what's on the end of the wire. Is it a eyelet, something that looks as if a bolt runs through it? If so, it's a ground, and it needs to be married to the chassis.
Does it have a socket on the end? If so, the socket will only fit the correct component. In modern autmobiles, meaning in the last 50 or so years, there are no universal connections, so you cannot plug the wrong wire on the wrong component, and it there are similar connecters, they are so far from each other they cannot be hooked incorectly..
If the wires are stripped bare, check to make sure that the headlights, parking lights, marker lights, and horn are hooked up. If everything is hooked up and you cannot find a ground wire, they are probabally the ground wire. I'm not sure about the headlights because they are independant from the fuse box, so make sure that all headlight wires are attached. If it's not headlights you can ground this wire because all it will do is pop a fuse if they are hot. Also, if you use a basic process of elimination, you can be postive that they are ground wires.
Get that resolved, and if you still have problems, make a new post, and we'll go down the road with the tailights. I think that you can get sockets without a problem at the whistlebritches car parts places.
Pay attention to the wiring. If the sockets are wired properly to begin with, you can use them to ensure correct wiring. The esaiest way to replace sockets is to make note to the high post--the retaining stud--and the low post on the lightbulb. Make sure that the correct wire goes to the high post and the low post. If the wires aren't correct or you have bad ground from the posts, the tailights will do all kinds of strange things.
