Hi,
My girlfriend has a 2000 Mercury cougar (about 50K miles on it). The car has been working fine and tonight when she went to go to the store, the car wouldn't go into gear (it's an automatic). The shift lever was locked. The car starts fine (and you can bypass the shift level lock with the manual bypass switch on the side of the center console). However, there are no brake lights either. If you press the brake pedal, the car stops fine, but no brake lights are coming on.
I checked the fuse which controls the rear brake lights and it's not blown. I also disconnected the battery and reconnected it in an effort to perhaps clear some ECU or something along those lines. No dice. As far as I can see - without taking out each fuse - none of the fuses are blown.
Does anyone know off hand what could be the problem? I'm planning on checking to see if a brake light bulb is blown, but that seems like a long shot - and I don't see where this would result in the car going into this shift lock mode, or why both brake lights would be out.
If you have any ideas, please let me know. Or feel free to e-mail me directly at
[email protected] with ideas. Any suggestions or ideas - or anyone with a shop manual that could look something related up - would be very helpful.
Thank you very much.
Ray