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Flickering brake lights in 2006 Taurus SE

Hi all.

Recently bought this vehicle. Overall fairly happy with it; but the brake light drives me nutts in the dark!

When the brake is applied the lights come on almost immediately, as they should.

But, say when the brake is all the way down, and I let it go for as little as a milimeter, the light goes out. If this is done repeatedly, such as when driving at low speed in a traffic jam, the result is that the brake lights flicker like hell.

I'd prefer the light to go off only when the pedal reaches the fully released position, or almost.

In previous cars I've owned this kind of adjustment was easy to do, by bending the brake switch mount a bit.

The brake switch in this vehicle however seems to have a mind of its own. Why is it that the on/off position isn't the same (such as you would expect in a regular switch). Is there some kind of (electronic) logic involved?

Also, I've had to follow my own car a couple of times, and it's no fun looking at those flickering lights: you just don't know if the car is stopping, or going forward! And I assume many other drivers think the same; so for safety's sake I'd like to "fix" this brake light behavior.

Anyway, if there is a simple way to adjust this thing so that the light stays on longer then I'd really like to hear it.

Thanks in advance,

Erik

Reply to
Rick
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The Taurus/Sable has a weird way of working the lights. The switch itself has very little physical movement. It is mounted to the brake pedal arm and works on the small amount of play between the pedal and the rod to the brake cylinder. When you back off on the pedal, the switch releases for a split second until the rod retracts back and puts pressure back against your foot.

Ideally, there should have been a small turn-off delay module. But for cost, and even safety reasons, the wiring is kept direct.

A more common brake light switch setup has a Normally Closed switch in a fixed position. When you press on the brake, the pedal moves away from it, which closes the circuit (you hold the switch down to open the circuit.)

I should point out there is a second brake switch if you have cruise control. On mine, it's a large blue switch with a long rod that is normally closed, and only opens (cuts power to cruise control), when the brake is pressed beyond a certain point. It's a safety backup, as the regular brake light switch also tells the cruise to disable. This switch cuts the power to the cruise control module if the brake light switch has failed open.

Reply to
Andrew Rossmann

Hey, thanks. That helps me out a bit. I may be able to do something about this crazy flickering after all...

Reply to
Rick

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