No brake light

[wile e. coyoda]

Hi, I'm trying to get this 88 LE brake light issue fixed before a trip. We can't get the power to the brake lights.

I'm much too tall and HUGE to contort myself under the dash. I've volunteered my kids for much of this work in an effort to teach them as well. Their info is pretty reliable but I follow up and dbl check where I can. Here's what we got figured so far.

There's an odd jumper wire just before the Left tail light housing. (see pic)

Wires in the black tape/wire harness behind the left trunk hood hinge are very flat, there appears to be a burn mark in the tape. We still need to open it all up and check for bare wire.

Test light shows power to blinker (it flashes very rapidly w/o tail light pkg attached but normal speed when hooked up), power to tail light but not to brake light.

20 amp fuses in Left kick panel are all good but I want to double check all the fuses are in the right place still. Never know if a wrong fuse is in the wrong place.

They say visual of brake switch is ok but impossible to replace. One thread mentioned it took them a few hours to replace it. Can this be tested with a light or multi-meter?

I don't recall the lights working on the rear dash either and I'm not sure the back up lights work which would give suspicion to the smashed wires at the hinge.

Side question:
Does adding Lucas gas treatment clog stuff up? It seems the pick-up-and-go just got up and went until we get to 2500 RPM. I found a paper blue shop towel shredded in pieces inside the air cleaner box. I cleaned it out, pounded the dust a bit, and no change. Going to do a tune up anyway.

It's 1:30 am. Hopefully the pic will show up ok.

Thanks all!

[drugal]

Let's start with that jumper. The rear left light housing has four wires going into it:

Green-Red is power for the brake lights
Green-Black is power for the signal lights
Light Green is power for the tail lights
White-Black is ground for the bulbs

The green and white-black wires on the left of your picture go to the left rear side marker light (little red light on the side), so it looks like someone has spliced the marker light into your tail lights. This will also power the licence plate lights and the other red marker light since they share the same wire coming in through the trunk. The only reason for doing this would be a broken wire in the harness, which 9/10 times is found where the harness flexes when you open/close the trunk. Remove all the tape and stuff from the harness, and inspect it.

If the wiring seems ok, the next step is to test the brake switch. The easiest way to do this is to find the light failure sensor. This is a little yellow box in the trunk. Remove the left interior panel from the trunk, and look inside there. Unclip the wiring connector from the sensor, and find the green-white wire. Hook up a voltmeter to that wire, and have someone press the brakes. You should get 12VDC. If you don't, you either have a bad brake switch, the 15A STOP fuse is blown, or you have a broken wire between the switch and the trunk.

If the light failure sensor is getting 12VDC at the green-white wire, and the brake lights still aren't working, the sensor itself is probably bad. Using a multimeter, check for continuity from the green-red wire at the sensor to the green-red wire at the rear lights to verify that wiring is good. Remove the sensor and open it up with a flat screwdriver. Inspect the circuit board for burn marks and cracked solder joints. At this point, you can either fix it with a soldering iron (very easy), bypass the sensor, or find a working one at a local junkyard.

[toyomoho]

The car has a burnt out light sensor.

Green is the tail light power coming from the light switch and going to the sensor..

Light Green is the wiring coming out of the sensor and going to the lights.

What color wire is the Green wire spliced into to?

Did someone try hooking up tailer lights? Or were they attempting to bypass the light failure sensor unit?

Stop light power from brake switch should be Green?white going to sensor. And Green/Red coming from sensor and going to the stop lights.

Find the sensor unit often drivers side of trunk. Check for power coming to the Green/White wire when brake is pressed.

[wile e. coyoda]

Thank You so much for a quick response. I'll put all that to work. Uhhh, I'm getting yelled at now. They say the car runs real loud and I'm here looking at the far right spark plug in my hand.... Crap.

I was checking the plugs and put the socket in the plug hole, pulled it out and the socket had oil half way up it. I unscrewed the plug and pulled it out later realizing there's now oil going in the piston. Anyway the plug points are... were dry but oil was all over the top of the plug.

I got to go do some damage control now.

thanks again.

[drugal]

I was checking the plugs and put the socket in the plug hole, pulled it out and the socket had oil half way up it. I unscrewed the plug and pulled it out later realizing there's now oil going in the piston. Anyway the plug points are... were dry but oil was all over the top of the plug.

That's pretty typical for cylinders 1 and 2 on an old 3S-FE. My last Gen2 had oily spark plug tubes the entire time I had it. I just cleaned it out once a year when changing plugs, and it ran ok for 600k on the engine.

[malayan]

How do you connect a GEN2 camry to a standard trailer light pigtail you buy at the store.

i tried but there are tooo many circuits ( brake light sending is seperate from turn signal circuit )

wierd