third brake light

[jrock4570]

after i shut the car off (93 caprice) the third brake light has a tendency to stay on for long periods of time. i currenty disconnected it completely as to not run my battery down. anyone know whats going on?

[Loekee75]

It's only the 3rd brake light doing this? That's odd because I always thought these were simply wired into the other 2 tailights..
The problem you have sounds like a stuck brake light switch, but if you say that it is only the 3rd then it is hard to say. For a simple fix you could splice the 3rd brake light into on of the other 2 brake lights.

[capriceforever]

Likely your brake light switch.

I had a similar problem on my 1990 Caprice Wagon. I couldn't understand for the life of me why the tailights would stick on, but the center light wouldn't. I just assumed that all the brake lights would be on, or none of them. I didn't understand why only one or the other would stick on.

As I discovered, the brake light switch has two stages. If you very gently push the plunger on the brake light switch, it first will turn on the brake lights, and then as you push a bit further, it turns on the center light, not all at once. When you hit the brake pedal, the movement is abrupt enough that you don't notice the lights coming on at slightly different times.

IN my case, the brake light switch had to be re-calibrated so it worked right, an easy fix, since it screws into a threaded holding mechanism.

My suggestion: Next time it sticks on, reach under the dash and grab the brake light mechanism and just jiggle it. See if that shuts it off.

Hope that helps you. If jiggling doesn't fix it, it could also be a faulty switch. But start with the switch, that was my problem. Good luck.