Update to the "always on brake lights"

Well boys and girls, after wrestling with the brake system for the past few days I am happy to report that all is well and Phred has passed inspection and is on the road again. It seems that like most mysteries this one didn't have a simple or single solution but was a combination of little things adding up to a big problem.

First, a quick recap...Brakelights would come on when ignition was turned on and would not go out. After relieving some of the pressure by bleeding the brakes again, the lights went out and would not come back on. Frustration set in followed by general wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So, what was the deal, Scooter?

I'm glad you asked. First of all, the pressure in the brake system was out of whack. I ended up taking apart all the lines and bleeding all of the brakes twice before I felt confident that I didn't have any junk in the lines or air in the system. Secondly, there were several places in the electrical lines where the wires were broken or melted, so all of those had to be repaired. Also, thanks to my wife's intuition, it turns out that one of the brake switches was bad after all (we replaced both but one of them turned out to be faulty, my wife's intuition still bats 1.000).

Next, I will end up pulling the master cylinder and replacing it. That is the last piece of the entire system that I haven't yanked and given a thorough inside-out inspection. The brakes are working fine right now with plenty of stopping power, so the priority on pulling the master cylinder has dropped until the money is available. In the meantime I need to do a complete wiring inspection to make sure there aren't any other melted bits lurking around, some minor engine maintenance and cleaning, and then its on to the interior. That will be another year-long project but I'm not in any hurry.

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice. I really appreciate the camaraderie and assistance of aircoolers everywhere.

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J Blair
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