I have a 2004 Hyundai Santa Fe V-6 with a 3.5L engine.
People keep telling me that my left brake light does not light up when I step on the brake. The right brake light works as it should.
It seems to be an intermittent problem. Sometimes, when people say the left brake light is not working, I back up to a store front window and step on the brake and the brake light on both sides are working.
Another time, I found that the left brake light was not working so I changed the bulb. The old bulb didn't necessarily look like it was bad, but I changed it anyway, and both brake lights then worked.
Shortly after that, I got stopped by a cop for the same thing (no ticket, he just let me know it wasn't working) and I changed the bulb again and both brake lights worked. The old bulb looked fine, but I changed it anyway and the problem went away.
Then, soon thereafter, once again someone told me the left brake light wasn't working, and I checked and it was not working. This time, I looked at the bulb again and it looked fine like before. So, I just cleaned the terminals on the bulb and socket and put it back together. That didn't fix anything, so the left side brake light is still not working once again.
Tomorrow, I am going to take both sides apart, then switch bulbs between the right side and left side and test it again. My guess is that won't fix the problem since I assume both bulbs are good.
I assume that there must be a loose connection or wire someplace, but I don't know how to check for that. I was planning on buying a test light anyway since I am also having an electrical problem involving the rear lights on an old bomb 1989 GMC pickup truck that I own. I am wondering if I could use the test light to try to narrow down the source of the Hyundai left brake light problem, but I don't know what or where to test.
Can anyone suggest anything else that I could try?