siopaolover

Hi everyone, I was messing with these stupid tail lights I bought off of ebay about 2 weeks ago. I was trying to find a "sweet spot" for all of the bulbs to be functioning properly. I had every bulb down except for the drivers side brake light.

I messed with it a little and tried to make all 3 prongs on the socket make contact with the metal. There would be small sparks while I tried adjusting it, and whenever there was a spark, I had made a connection. I kept adjusting it to try to find the perfect position for it when the brake lights turned off. The passenger side and the 3rd brake light went out, and I wanted to find out what had happened.

I started the car back up and was given error messages. One was a message for ASR and the other for BAS. Now the brake lights don't work unless I turn my headlights on, and they stay on all the time like the running lights.

Also, I put the OEM tail lights back, but it didn't make a difference. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

here's a video of what happens:

desired_speeds

theres a possibility you fried your brake switch

siopaolover

That's what I was thinking. But if I really had fried it, would the brake lights still turn on whenever I turn the lights on? That's what I don't get

fatchance

If you put the OEM lights back in and still have a lamp defective warning, either the brake switch is at fault or you may have a bad bulb?

For the ASR/BAS problem, just drive the car and those warnings, the system will recalibrate it's parameters once it's see's wheel sensor input back to the computer.

siopaolover

I've narrowed it down to the brake switch. I tried swapping the bulbs with the other side just to make sure.

And about the ASR and BAS, I have them no matter how long I drive the car. I'm hoping that by changing the brake switch, I should be able to take care of that.

I ordered the replacement part from autohausaz a few days ago and now I'm just waiting for it to come in. Anyone have any good DIYs on this?

illest

check your fuses too. I had the same issue .... been too lazy to fix it.

siopaolover

I was thinking that too. They'll be the first thing I check if swapping the brake switch doesn't work

siopaolover

I just finished replacing the brake switch. Nothing happened. I purchased the aftermarket switch off of autohausaz and it was a little longer. I removed the old brake switch and put the new one in. I put it back in its place, started the car up, and none of the brakes worked. Any suggestions?

skj0lsvik

Probably not this but could it be the box which lies under the left rear passanger seat? I know for a fact that if you remove the contactor from that box you'll lose both ASR and ABS...

siopaolover

I'll check that out in the morning. One thing I noticed was that the brake lights only worked when I had other lights on (running lights or headlights). What could this be from?

siopaolover

All of my fuses are still good. Is there anything else I could possibly do about this?

siopaolover

So it ended up just being 2 fuses in the headlight switch. Good thing I didn't take it to the dealership! They were charging me $135 for an hour of labor! well anyways, thanks to everyone who contributed and helped me find the problem.

here's a picture of the fuses in case anyone needs it in the future