Cant find brake light switch. Please help. 86 testarossa
If your brake lights aren't working, the trouble can also be a bad connection in the w or y white connector on the fuse-relay panel (the brake light current is surprisingly high -- like 8~10 A -- and can frazzle the terminals). Here are some photos showing the location David mentioned and diagnostic information that you may find helpful: Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login A good reliability improvement IMO is to add a jumper wire to directly connect the red wire in the w connector to the red wire in the y connector.
Sure, using LEDs instead of incandescents would help a lot, but it doesn't stop someone from putting incandescent bulbs back in. Adding the jumper increases the reliability of the chassis regardless of the bulb type (that brake light signal needlessly just passes thru the fuse-relay PCB -- it isn't connected to anything else at all).
Steve, what about a separate relay near the M/C from the (blue/black) wire 12VDC. to red wire to brake lights. I burned thru 2 brake like switches.
Yes, using the red wire in the w connector (from the brake light switch) to close a relay connecting the blue-black wire to the red wire in the y connector would greatly reduce the current in the brake light switch (but I'm not a fan of adding complexity). Have you ever measured the actual current in your brake light circuit? I'm at 84K miles, and still on my original brake light switch so you seem to be cursed Maybe someone has done something like replaced the brake light bulbs in the chiclet with some much higher wattage bulbs and this is over stressing your brake light switch contacts or made some other bizarro modification. Another possibility might be your LH rear bonnet gas spring body (which conveys the brake light signal up to the bulbs on the chiclet) might be occasionally shorting to the engine bonnet, and if this coincides with the brake lights being "on" could give a big current spike (look for a wear scar on the gas spring body). Just some random thoughts...