panel lights activated by brakes!

Please help. I have a '95 Legacy sedan 2.2L and when I step on the brake pedal the instrument and HVAC lights come on, dimmer than if the lights are on to drive at night but they are definitely on. Doesn't matter if the car is running or not, the key doesn't even have to be in the ignition. TG

Reply to
TG
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Now this sounds like an earth fault. Check around the rear light clusters, and find where they connect to to the car body. This earth has probably become corroded.

Reply to
richard gary clark

Is there anything that isn't broke on your car (:

Reply to
Jim Stewart

Check your dual filament bulbs for a sagging brake filament touching the tail light filament.

Carl

Reply to
Carl Wedekind

Hey! I have a similar problem on my '00 Legacy GT. I noticed it about a month ago. I have a 5 speed manual. See if you can duplicate some of these other symptoms:

  1. Engine is running, I'm in reverse and feet are on the brake + clutch. If I turn off the ignition and TAKE THE KEY OUT the engine keeps running as long as my foot is on the brake! Take foot off brake, engine stops running gracefully.

  1. Engine not running, transmission is still in reverse, no key in the ignition. If I step on the brake, the instrument cluster lights up and the HVAC fan comes on, but the radio does not. I am unable to duplicate this state with the key in the ignition!

  2. Engine is running, I am driving normally down the road with the headlights off. (DRL's are on) If I step on the brake, the backlight on my radio display goes out! If I turn the headlights on, the radio light does not go out when I step on the brake, i.e. it behaves normally.

This has been going on for about a month, it may or may not be related to the 60,000 mile service I had. Do these symptoms together indicate a particular fault?

~Jason

Reply to
Jason

Yes, your car is possessed.

Reply to
Dominic Richens

Reply to
Edward Hayes

Reply to
Alan

Worth checking if there are any wires touching the brake or clutch pedal, which might be chafed and making contact when pedal is pushed. Post re: bulb filament also happens occasionally . Ed B.

Reply to
ed

Some of the suggestions have pointed to the possibility of a sneak path feeding electricity from the brake light, its wiring, or the socket, back to the panel lights through the tail light, its wiring, or the socket. A first test to start isolating things would be to remove the bulbs from both sides and see whether the problem goes away.

The fact that the panel lights are dimmer than normal means that there's a voltage drop happening somewhere. This argues against there being a short in the wiring and in favor of the problem happening inside a bulb, due to the filaments touching each other or, as has been suggested, a path through both filaments because the socket has somehow lost its ground.

TG wrote:

Reply to
BBB

I liked it too but that wasn't the problem. Still looking. TG

Reply to
TG

This happened to me with an Opel GT. Found out a brake light fuse was high resistance. It dimmed my lights or make something glow brighter. I used a resistor checker to figure it out. Check all your fuses under the hood. If you pop a headlight fuse, all the headlights (high and low) will glow at 1/2 brightness. They have some wierd wiring under the hoods.

Reply to
Mike B.

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