300M center brake light problem

Heh. That reminds me.

Mine hasn't been working for the past 6 to 12 months.

Is it easy to get at?

Cut the connector out of the picture and splice the wires together.

I pulled out about half of the plastic fasteners that hold the trunk-lid lining in place. The service manual says to remove all of them.

There is still voltage at the "fed side" of the connector, the part that plugs into the connector at the left of the trunk. So there is an open circuit between one end of the wire and the other. My guess is that it could have fractured where it gets flexed due to opening and closing the trunk. It's in a whole bundle, including the wires for the remote trunk release and the "trunk open" indicator -- all inside that mesh sleeving. I suppose the best combination of "sorta cheap" and neat would be to try to find that section of wiring harness at a wrecking yard, but there would be no guarantee that that wouldn't be faulty as well.

Perce

While I was about it, I checked the bulbs in the rear light assemblies at each side. I think I might have replaced one or two before. Some looked fine, but the brake-light and turn-signal bulbs looked a little dark so I replaced them. I hadn't realized before that all ten bulbs are the same dual-filament type, but the backup and turn-signal bulbs use only the high-wattage filaments, the inner two tail-light bulbs on each side use only the low-wattage filaments; and both filaments of the outermost bulbs on each side are used -- the low-wattage one for the tail light and the high-wattage one for the brake light. Although the Owner's Manual and Service Manual say that all are type 3157K, the ones I removed were 3057K. The ones I installed in their place are 3157LL. (Our car is an '02 model.)

Perce

Be very careful when working on this harness. My (former) '99 Intrepid had the electric trunk release quit working when it was 1 or 2 years old. The dealer found the problem was the same harness had a failed wire within it, so they replaced it. Unfortunately in the process of doing that they managed to fry the BCM, a very expensive mistake and caused a few days delay in the repair. Perhaps they didn't disconnect the battery before working on the wiring, but I don't know what they did. They did explain to me that the trouble spot was where the wire flexes, just as you mentioned.

I already had a service plan, so that paid for the rental car during the delayed repair. If I didn't have a service plan, I'm not sure if they would have offered it, but it wasn't a concern fortunately.

Regarding the center brake light, it used to burn out all the time. I figured the slamming of the trunk lid was hard on the bulbs. Strangely, my Hoover vacuum used the same bulb, which I always kept on hand. I'm happy that my new car uses LEDs for the center brake light. :)

Yes. They made minor changes to the bulb specifications around 2002, but I believe they are all compatible. They spec'd a common bulb for all, probably to reduce inventory costs.