Brake lights/turn signal problem!!

[davidcope]

Last night on my way home, my lamp out indicator turned on. I made it home & diagnosed the problem. When the indicator came on, my cruise control immediately cut out. So, I checked fuse #1, rear lights, turn signals, cruise control, etc. Not blown. The weird thing is that I was driving later that night and the lamp out indicator went off, then turned on like 5 minutes later, then back off after a little bit. When the indicator is on, I have NO rear lights, no cruise control, and my turn signals do not flash, they just stay on and I have to manually click the lever up and down. Another very weird thing I noticed was that with no lights on, my brakes would all work, but the Lamp out light would come on only when I touched the brake pedal. With either driving lights or headlights on, the lamp out light would stay on constantly, and I would have no rear lights. Turn headlights off, and my brake lights would work. I have no idea what would cause this except maybe a short somewhere, and I really don't want to search for a shorted wire. Does anybody have any suggestions or experience with this type of problem??

Dave

 

[Mike Gallion]

Bad filament?

I ran into a similar problem with my wifes windstar and wound up finding ( after much hair pulling) that one of my turn signal lamps had a filament broken and it was either shorting to ground or something screwy like that. Anyway, after replacing the lamp, everything was fine.

 

[davidcope]

Well I found and fixed the problem yesterday after looking over the wiring diagrams for a while. Turns out the ground wire that is located in the trunk on the trunk latch brace was quite loose and was causing weird things to happen. So, I took it off, cleaned off the metal around the hole, and tightened it down. So far, so good, no more problems like I was having. So, if anybody else is having a similar problem, be sure to check all related ground wires.