my tail lights act very strange.. sometimes the work fine with no problems.. The blinkers/ flashers always work. But sometimes only the driver side brake light will work. when the road lights are on both work. except one brake light, but the blinkers work. and other times when the road lights are on when i step on the brakes instead of getting brighter the lights get dimmer. Blinkers and brake lights are on the same thing right? what would cause the flashers to work but not the brake lights?
Check your grounds at your tailight housing! Just take off one of the nuts securing the housing and clean to bare metal the mounting surface where the nut tightens down. You may also have a loose socket. Try spreading the little fingers slightly outwards. Make sure where the socket snaps into the housing is also bright metal,and it doesn't hurt to wire brush the little fingers on the socket clean either! Check your body to engine ground also. Grounds,or poor ones,I meant to say,will give you more aggravation than most any other part of your wiring! Note,you MUST have a good ground from the - side of your battery to the engine and from the engine to the body! Usually if your negative battery cable is bad you will have cranking problems. If the others are bad you may get the lighting problems you are having,as well as charging problems with your alternator. Good luck on it! Non of this should be hard or expensive! Just some cleaning and checking of some cables! If in doubt on your cable connections,do the same thing. Take them off and clean both where they attach and the terminals themselves to bright metal and reinstall!
Remember that the brake lights go through the turn signal switch. A bad contact on one side will keep that light from working. The dimming lights when braking does sound like a bad ground.
what would cause them to change so frequently though? one day its fine and the next something is wrong.. and since the brakes go with the turn signals since the brake light on the passenger side doesn't work shouldn't the turn signal not work on that side as well?
