The Internet to the Rescue: Brakelights

I lent my car to my main squeeze. Later that night she called to say that all the brake lights (left, right, and high mount) would not go off. She tried pulling the fuses, but that didn't work. I suggested that she just pull the battery cable, but she didn't feel up to doing that in the night. It took a call to AAA in the morning for her to get started.

Being ever resourceful, when she got back, she searched the web to find the brake wiring diagram on about.com which seemed to show that the brake light switch was the culprit. Some more searches and I had a decent idea where to find the switch and what to do on answers.yahoo.com. (Being who I am, there was an interlude to notify all-parts.com that they'd misspelled "Cadillac" as "Caddillac".) With her watching the rear lights we determined that two thicknesses of a postcard were all that separated the switch indicating the brake being on or off. My guiding principle in this regard is to ask myself, "What would Bob do?", Bob being a fellow graduate student with a firm idea of quality workmanship, integrity, and what slapdash fix would hold until the cavalry arrived.

I didn't have the necessary open end wrenches so I wrapped the brake pedal lever with the necessary cardboard and went looking for a sale on open end wrenches. My usual source for cheap tools (tools I can lend or lose without getting upset), National Wholesale Liquidators, closed it's stores in my area due to the credit crunch and there doesn't seem to an obvious replacement.

Stay tuned.