Hello, maybe someone can help me. My car was hit in the rear approx 2 months ago. Since that time, I have replaced the taillight assembly and the bulbs inside. Now, my tails go on when the headlights are on, but I have no brake lights, and my left turn signal is flashing very slowly. I know when I replaced the bulbs, I scraped some brownish compound out of the socket thinking it was some sort of corrosion buildup. Someone recently told me that it is a type of grease put there to conduct electricity.
I have since checked the terminals of my brake light switch with a test light, I have a red power wire constantly going into the switch and it lights, and coming out, the testlight lights when I apply the pedal at both white wires exiting the swtch. I would assume that the switch should be good then. In the back at the actual wiring harness in the side of the trunk, I have applied the testlight to see if power is going through sucessfully. This is hard because somewhere along the line, the wiring colors have switched. I plan on possibly getting a new socket where the bulbs install and splicing it in.
My question is this.

1. Could the switch be giving me positive test results and STILL be bad?

2. Could scraping alot of that brown compound out of the socket have caused a bad connection now?

3. Is it really that hard to rewire a connection directly from the switch to the rear brakelights? Especially being that colors switch three times?

I know this is a long message, but I have been driving without brake light for a month now, and am getting tired of pulling out the headlights everytime I want to stop at a light or stop sign.


Also, when my headlights are on at night, the turn signal goes from blinking slowly to a steady light not blinking at all. This make any sense to anyone out there?

 

moving to eltronics board. hope they can help you

 

Really seems as if you've lost the ground connection for the signals...what you could do to verify this, is find the ground off of one of the bulbs in question, and run a wire from it, to a clean chassis ground. My assumption is that all the bulb grounds should be tied together (generally black in wire color), then connected to the chassis somehwere.

 

Slow,

Check the ground connections at the taillights. You might have to remove some bolts and clean some terminals and connectors to get a good ground.

Verify that the ground on the rear body panel/impact bar is a good ground by connecting a jumper from the battery negative or good engine ground directly to the lamp socket ground terminals.

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Later,
Vader
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"Make Me Bad"
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