Hey guys, I'm wondering whats going on.. The first week I had the car on the road, my 3rd brake light on my 1986 hatch worked.. But I noticed the light for the window defrost kept coming on, so I unplugged the wire to the defroster.. From that point on, it seemed like taking out the ground screwed something up.. I plugged the wire back in, and the rear light refused to work.. Could I have burnt out a fuse? I'd get in there with my meter, but it was a long day.. Any help appreciated.

 

You might just have burnt out bulbs I just had to replace all five of mine

 

For future reference to those who search this on Thirdgen, or Google.. The ground connector on the pass. side hatch strut had broken, and slipped loose.. Took me 2 beers to find it.

 

funny i was just thinkin i need to lookin into my mine light is out as well. hope its just the bulbs or somethin simple like urs

 

i have never looked at mine. just the lights on thing but not break lights.

 

It's all detective work my friend..

 

finally got around to replacin the plastics that go in the pull down hatch tracks. so now the hatch is able to pull down correctly.

i hope the brake light would work after fixin that but didnt.

check bulbs with meter and all checked out good. i figured i would get something with the meter where it makes contact to the hatch while pressin the brake but didnt

will look for that groundin strap on the strut and also try to research more on here. hard cuz it pulls alot of the for sale stuff lol

 

Have you checked your LID fuse? Is your hatch pulldown wired in stock or has it been rewired to an accessory wire? I had about the same problem and found that my hatch pull down had been rewired to an accessory wire and when my LID fuse blew I didn't know since my hatch pull down still worked. I finally found it to be blown and after that my third brake lights worked again. Looks like the guy who owned my Camaro before me didn't know which fuse was for the hatch pull down and just wired around it.

 

when mine didn't work it was the switch on the break pedal replaced and it worked

 

well mine were all out so i looked around and the cheapest place to get them was here on this site - lon of top down solutions - about 3.00 or so each. other places were 7.00 each.

 

Got all mine FREE, was at the junkyard and pulled off the tail light, looked and the bulbs look still good and took them home and they worked. I know, I'm a penny pincher.