No Brake Lights!
- Thread starter Mcozzi
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- brakelights electric wiring
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My ground in my trunk didnt have a bolt in it. I assume its from when that 1/4 was replaced. Check that. Mine was in the back corner on the floor nearest the driver tail light.
The harness that feeds the rear lights might be the culprit. It runs along the driver's side of the floor in the cabin, through the rear bulkhead by the driver's rear wheel and back into the trunk. There is a good possibility that the wires in this harness are made of aluminum. I found this out in my Monte. When new and shiny and well insulated, the aluminum harness will work well. Age and oxidation at the terminal ends and breaks in the wire that go unfound can cripple it. These wires are not stranded like their copper counterparts, they are usually just one heavy wire. What may have happened is that the wire that feeds the brake lights has either corroded or broken in the connection housing that is attached to the trunk pan near the driver's side tail light assembly. It could be a broken ground lead terminal or attaching bolt as mentioned, or it could be the power lead to that group of lights. Aluminum wires are not easy to fix. Normal solder does not work with them and they are very sensitive to heat where copper is more tolerant. The wire itself has to be sterile clean; any contamination will ruin the connection and cause problems. This harness is an issue that I will be having to deal with some time in the immediate future myself as I have to run a circuit check on my back up lights due to swapping in a four speed. this summer past.
Nick
Nick
you are corect about the problem the aliminum wires creat but for the brake lights there is a yellow and green wires so I doubt they would both corroded.
I agree that issues involving multiple wires in a multi-wire connection can be unlikely but it is not impossible. Further, Mr. Sony lives in rust belt country, Iowa being classified as one of a number of northern states where vehicles suffer from a high degree of rust damage due to the use of salt on the roads from efforts to keep them clean after snow falls. In that multi-contact housing in the trunk, it was assembled using brass or copper contact terminals which were crimped to those aluminum wires and then plugged into the socket. There was no attempt to waterproof that multi-plug. To the contrary, it was both open to the elements as well as being vulnerable to damage from stuff being thrown into the trunk. The weakest point of those terminals is the crimp point where the wire enters the fitting. After 36 years of service, everything in that harness is old and fragile, even the sections of the wire buried inside the cabin in their sleeves. The aluminum oxidizes and the brass corrodes in one half of that plug and almost the same thing happens in the matching half except that the wires are more likely to be multi-strand copper which is also prone to corrosion in wet and salty environments and which, as the forum can testify, will look absolutely intact and pristine until you try to take a connection apart and the wires fall off. Think what will have to happen here is a continuity test using either an OHM checker or some kind of an audible sound version tester that will signal when it identifies a bad circuit. I use the audible unit because it beats trying to watch a meter while buried in a dark and nasty place, like under a dash.
Make sure emergency flashers are off. Could have a bad emr flasher making them inop. Test all fuses with a volt meter or test light to see if the fuse is good and is there power to them
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