brake light issue

[kelseydum]

Was showing my buddy my passenger side power window I just installed and was showing him my new 3rd brake light and he told me my right brake light was out... Do'h! I unbolted it and the other one goes out... Do'h! I have the flame LED lights from Speedway. I used a cheap brake switch from Oreilly's.

The tail lights, and turn signals still work fine. Do you think this could be a faulty brake switch? Would the interruption be between the brake switch and the lights them selves? No fuses are blown so I'm leaning toward the switch. I tested one side of the brake switch and my test light went on but not the other side... is it supposed to read like this or is this the problem?

I've been driving it all summer and just started tearing into it to work out a few small kinks for next car show season.

 

[Sam_Fear]

How is the switch wired - one wire in, two wires out? Did it quit working after you installed the third light? Check your grounds.

 

[kelseydum]

The brake light switch has 2 wires coming out. ALL the lights worked fine up until now. I'll try unhooking the 3rd brake light and see if that works. I'm cleaning the grounds too as we speak.

 

[donsrods]

If you don't have one, get one of those 12 volt test lights that look like an ice pick with a wire out of one end and a alligator clip on it. They are invaluable for finding electrical problems and go for as little as $ 5.00 up.

I think you have a bad ground.

Don

 

[kelseydum]

I swapped out the switch just to see and they are working now. Should I still check to see if something ruined the old switch? Could there still be a ground issue and this end up happening again?

Can I add an extra inline fuse or something to help protect this?

 

[Sam_Fear]

Sounds like it was just a bad switch. Poor ground won't cause a switch to fail.

 

[kelseydum]

I think I got it fixed. The switch was the only thing testing bad... replaced it and everything is working fine now. kinda glad this happened... I needed to go through and clean up my wiring and this gave me an excuse. I'm spending a bunch of time but I will feel much better when everything is clean and proper. I saw the weather proof connections to protect the grounds and think I might use these for ALL my ground connections to keep the terminals from corroding and rusting... either this or I was thinking of gluing plastic whiskey bottle caps around the ground connections to keep them from getting wet.

I think this was a bad switch and not ground connections but it's always good to double take your grounds and do something to keep them clean.

Thanks all for the help!

 

[bob w]

Cleaning up the wiring will be a nice winter project. It will insure no problems next year.