Brake Lights problem

[jimainnj]

I thought I was finished:confused: I installed double filiment bulb and socket

in the brake light on the trunk,I wired both wire's from pigtail too the wire on the brake light works great and bright. the directional signals work fine front and back, the 2 tail lights are wired also to come on with the brake light and they do, the problem is when the head light & parking lights are on and you step on the brakes the left rear tail light goes out completly,the trunk and right rear tail work ok. I used 1154 dual bulbs and EC -s24 piigtail sockets from car-quest. on all three tail and stop light. any sugestions. Jim

[TodFitch]

Generally if a bulb goes out when power is applied to both filaments it means a bad ground on the bulb.

[desoto1939]

The current is running thru the turn signal switch on the truck. Therefor the unit is gounded and the four ways worked. also the turnsignals also worked. When I hit the brake the bulb would not light up. Thsi all happened because I had some damaged to the rear fender and had it repainted. After the repaint is when I lost the ground.

I then ran a ground wire fromt he bracket that hold the socket to a good spot on the frame of the car and this solved my problem. Good advise is to alwasys runs a ground wire from each headlight and also taillight. This will insure you have good bright lights. Remeber that in a modern car there is only one wire running to an accessory or light to supply the current the body of the car is basically the other wire or the ground to complete the circuit.

In our cars we donot have two wires to a lamp like you have in a house with a black and white wire to conplete the circuit. The cars that had the Lucus system had two wires and this is why they had so many issues that if one wire went bad then the lights went out.

Her is how to test use a wire with an aligator clip, attache to the light socket and then attach the other end of the to an another aligator clip and then attach this to a good bare spor on the frame see if the light then works. If so then the grounding issue has been found.

Rich Hartung

Desoto1939@aol.com

[greg g]

The center lamp should only have a single contact single filament light. As it should only come on as a brake lamp. But I could not figure out how to isolate it from the flasher in the signal curcuit. The flasher in the signal circuit actually does two jobs. It provides inturupted flow to the bright filament when the brakes are off, and switches the power off when the brake lights are illuminated. How is the question that needs to be adressed in order for the center light not to be interupted when the brakes are on.

You could isolate the center lamp from that circuit and run another lead back from the power out of the brake switch directly to the center lamp, bypassing the flasher.

[steveplym]

I'm with Tim Adams on this one, bad ground. I had that happen and used a little sand paper around where the socket goes and it fixed the issue.

[jimainnj]

Cleaned the tail light housing and body around it and moved the bulb around in the socket and all is working, seems the bulb must move some in the socket when I hit bumps. I'll work on the pig tail next. Thanks again for the help.

ps Greg I put the dual pig tail in the center brake light and the dual bulb in so it would be bright and it works fine, as I said I wired the 2 wire pig tail into the one brake wire that went to the center light. Thanks again for the reply. Jim

[P-12 Tommy]

I'm with Tim Adams on this one, bad ground. I had that happen and used a little sand paper around where the socket goes and it fixed the issue.

I also agree!

Tom