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Old 06-12-2016, 10:58 AM   #1
Mini-Skoolie
 
Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 44
Question Which ones are the brake lights? :P

I'm having some trouble with my brake lights not working on my skoolie that is almost complete. But I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not even sure which light should be the brake light. Here's the functionality I'm getting now:

Upper red lights: Children crossing
Upper yellow lights: Nothing
Lower red lights: Turn signals (unexpected!)
Lower yellow lights: Parking lights (unexpected!)

This is not what I would have expected. I would have expected the lower yellow to be turn signals and the lower red to be both brake and tail lights. Perhaps the previous owner miswired something?

Right now, when I press on the brake, nothing happens. The fuse is good, and when I put a volt meter on the fuse while pressing the brake, I get 12V.

I've included a photo below. Can anyone help me understand this a little better? Which light is actually supposed to be for the brake? Thank you!!


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Old 06-12-2016, 11:55 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by minty View Post
I'm having some trouble with my brake lights not working on my skoolie that is almost complete. But I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not even sure which light should be the brake light. Here's the functionality I'm getting now:

Upper red lights: Children crossing
Upper yellow lights: Nothing
Lower red lights: Turn signals (unexpected!)
Lower yellow lights: Parking lights (unexpected!)

This is not what I would have expected. I would have expected the lower yellow to be turn signals and the lower red to be both brake and tail lights. Perhaps the previous owner miswired something?

Right now, when I press on the brake, nothing happens. The fuse is good, and when I put a volt meter on the fuse while pressing the brake, I get 12V.

I've included a photo below. Can anyone help me understand this a little better? Which light is actually supposed to be for the brake? Thank you!!

I'm thinking miswired as well. This is why I gutted my wiring to rewire it
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Old 06-12-2016, 11:56 AM   #3
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You're right that the lower red should be combination stop and tail lamps, and the lower yellow should be turn. Check them again in the dark. You might find that when the brake is pressed multiple lamps come on very dim. It's entirely possible that somebody has modified the wiring and really messed it all up, but more often the cause of weird stop/tail/turn lamp behavior is that a ground wire is broken. Find an assistant so that one can operate the brake, turn, and tail functions (one at a time) while another person checks voltage from each of the leads on the lamps to a known-good ground, ie not to the lamp's ground wire. It's probably easiest to check first for +12 supply controlled by those three functions and work from there according to the result.
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Old 06-12-2016, 12:15 PM   #4
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It may be that the covers have simply been swapped. The "outer" lights should be the turn signals, the "inner" should be the tail/brake. I have rewired mine using 4 red LED lights so that all four serve as tail lights, but the outer retain the "turn" indication, and the inner serve as "brake".
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Old 06-12-2016, 02:23 PM   #5
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I'm with Brad on this, all the buses I see the red brake lens is inner and the yellow turn lens is outer. From your picture and description it sounds like they are wired this way but the lenses are swapped.

As for the stop/brake lamp, it could be wiring... It could also be the wrong type of laml because a two-function bulb is going to have two filaments. If you're inheriting all of these gremlins then it's hard to say just how screwy the last person was.

Just curious, are you going to remove or disable the upper lamps? It seems like a lot of states mandate this. For my own part I kind of like the idea of rewiring the reds at least to coincide with the brake lamp to offer higher visibility stop indication but I suppose you need to HAVE stop indication first!

Anyways, I suggest start with the easy stuff first, swap lenses, swap bulbs, just to make sure before tearing into major rewiring.
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Old 06-14-2016, 05:39 PM   #6
Mini-Skoolie
 
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Thanks everyone. I think it's quite reasonable at this point to conclude that the lenses were swapped. So here's my plan:

1. Start another thread on whether I have to cover/remove the upper lights
2. Steal the working wire for the upper left red and wire it to the secondary filaments of the lower brake lights (which are currently yellow but will be red)
3. Wire the other end (already located) of said wire to the brake pedal
4. Swap lower red/yellow lenses

How's that sound?
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Old 06-14-2016, 05:53 PM   #7
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it makes sense the lights were swapped as the yellow light would be single filament only.. but is acting as tail so theres no brake light... what is now the red light probably has the dual filament socket / bulb and is acting as turn signal so this leaves the brake lights no place to go... swap the light fixtures themnselves outter to inner and keep the wires in their position... ie wires going to yellow would now go to red... and vice versa...

the dual filament sockets will have 3 wires.. you want the dimmer light to be the tail and the brighter to be the brake..

-Christopher
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Old 06-15-2016, 09:09 PM   #8
Mini-Skoolie
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by minty View Post
Thanks everyone. I think it's quite reasonable at this point to conclude that the lenses were swapped. So here's my plan:

1. Start another thread on whether I have to cover/remove the upper lights
2. Steal the working wire for the upper left red and wire it to the secondary filaments of the lower brake lights (which are currently yellow but will be red)
3. Wire the other end (already located) of said wire to the brake pedal
4. Swap lower red/yellow lenses

How's that sound?
Good news! I got everything working today, using the above steps. I still need to clean up a few wires and put an inline fuse, but I'm good to go now. It ended up that this plan worked great because the double filament bulb sockets were on what was the lower yellow lights. Thanks everyone for your input!
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