Xantia brake light

[froggy]

Hi, one of my brake lights is dimmer than the other? fitted new bulb, but no improvement. any advice gratefully received, Terry.

[GiveMeABreak]

It'll likely be a bad earth or one of the lamp clusters or a contact or the wiring. The bulb holder units can get a bit gunked up - so make sure the contacts where the bulb touches have none of that green or grey calcification stuff build up. Next check the wiring in the lamp cluster wiring plug. Check both the common earth and the actual brake light wire - sometimes the wiring in the plug can become loose and is making poor contact. I doubt it will be the earth as if that was playing up it should be affecting the other lights, but no harm in checking.

Failing that it will be a matter of following the wiring loom back from the plug to find the problem at the other end.

Pin 2 is the earth on the right and left rear light clusters.
Pin 3 on the rear left cluster is the stop lamp and the same on the right, with the exception that the right cluster also feeds the third high level brake lamp from pin 3, so there will be 2 wires coming from the right cluster on pin 3.

The earths have separate earthing points on the body for the left and right rear lamp clusters, so should be easy to check those.

[froggy]

cheers, that's great