brake light is acting funny...

[HijackTheLeft]

I've been having a problem with my brake lights for quite a while now. When I'm driving during the day, they work fine. However, when my lights are turned on, and I press the brake pedal, the passenger side light gets brighter like normal, but my driver side taillight just goes out. its obviously not the bulbs, but i changed them anyway. about this same time, my dome light stopped working. that is also not the bulb. my car's inspection ran out at the end of december, and im incredibly broke right now, since im recovering from a cross country move and a month out of work. so, im not really trying to take it to a mechanic. i'm pretty sure its a short somewhere, but i know next to nothing about automotive electrical stuff. so if anybody has any suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

[onosqv]

It's probably the notorious grounding issue. Take the taillight piece out, then inspect the ground for each of the bulb containers. Unscrew w/ a Philips screw driver and pull the ground wire away from teh plastic. Chances are, the ground wire has been covered partially w/ the plastic and not providing a clean connection.

Clean everything up w/ a razor blade, some filing on the plastic to make it straight, and reconnect.

[HijackTheLeft]

awesome thank you. ill have to check that this weekend. ill update as necessary.

[nzmoman]

Did it work? Got a friend who is having that same issue

[nuts510]

when your checking for the grounds be sure to check where the ground attaches on the socket about 90% of the time that's where the ground problem is, you can also verify this by clamping an alligator clamping to a good ground and touching it to the outside of the bulb socket and seeing if the bulb then starts behaving right it will get a lot brighter two when you had the good ground.