Vandals blew out my rear window with a big rock. Coincidentally, the
3rd brake light (the one in the rear window) stopped working, but there was no contact with the housing, there is no damage to it and the bulb filament is intact. I have not yet had time to confirm by metering that there is no current, but since all else seems fine, I assume there is no current.Is it, by any chance, such that if the defroster ciruitry is damaged, the brakelight fails, as well?
Joe
On the 850 sedans, the 3rd brake light assembly slides onto contacts that power it. These contacts are not high enough quality for the job they have to do. Try moving the light forward a bit and see if it starts working.
This one near drove me nuts. Replacing the bulb fixed it for a day or so. Wiggling it fixed it for a day or so. Shining up the contacts fixed it for a day or so. Bending the tangs fixed it for a day or so. Applying a little conductive grease fixed it for a day or so. In retrospect, these are all probably just variants of wiggling it.
Eventually I figured out that the wires connect to the lower slide contacts with spade lugs and that the upper (removable) piece connects to its bendy contacts with spade lugs. It turns out that the wires to the lower assembly are just long enough that you can just pull them out a couple of inches and connect them to directly to the spade terminals on the socket. Voila.
It might be a little tricky sliding the assembly together with the relatively short wires attached if you haven't already done it 75 times trying to get the sliding contacts to work, so maybe you should spend a couple of months trying to fix the bendy-slidy contacts before re-routing the wires as I've described.
LOL! Thanks for the advice!
Joe
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