Subject: Re: [TR] Sorry! TR3 LED brake bulbs again

From: "Randall" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2015 16:53:18 -0700

> Talking about brake lights, my almost-finished 57 restoration 
> has no brake
> lights. Power is flowing to  the switch on the 5-way 
> connector but nothing
> in the other wire.  Can it be anything other than the switch 
> which screws
> into the connector?

You're checking the output with someone standing on the brake pedal?  Takes a fair amount to trigger the switch, one of the reasons
I don't like it.

If so, then pretty much has to be the switch.  If there were a short somewhere, it would have blown the fuse.

> I have several of these things:  any way of knowing if they 
> work off the
> car?

You could try hitting them with air pressure, see if they close.  I don't know what the spec is, but I would think 90 psi would be
enough.

> And is brake fluid going to go everywhere / am I going 
> to have to
> re-bleed the system if I change the unit out?

Last time I changed one, I used a modified F-clamp to hold the brake pedal partially down, to close the valve to the reservoir.
That greatly limited the amount of fluif that could trickle out of the open connection.  I still made the swap as quickly as
possible, which may be why I didn't need to bleed afterwards.  Or maybe I just got lucky.

But that was long ago; I got so frustrated with those switches failing that I converted to a mechanically operated switch back in
the 90s.  This was done in a hurry, obviously, but it has worked very well since 2008
http://s258.photobucket.com/user/TR3driver/media/TS13571L/DSCF0029_crop.jpg.html

Before that, I had the switch stuck in the pedal box, which also worked well but wasn't as well hidden
http://s258.photobucket.com/user/TR3driver/media/TS39781LO/DSCF0001.jpg.html

-- Randall  

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