The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Brake light issue 1946 3/4 ton

Trying to put in hydrolic brake light switch. Painless wiring harness. Have power to plug that goes to switch. When "jump switch", no brake lights. My blinkers were working but also not working now. Headlights and tail lights are working. Last nugget, while installing, grounded power wire for brake switch and blew stop and wiped fuses. New fuses in. Checked all others. Thoughts?? Saw commentary about blinker switch. Where is that located?

Sounds like you violated rule #1....you are working on the wiring with the battery still connected.

Agreed. Any ideas where/how to locate or chase down the source of the issue?

I would start by verifying all wires go to their intended place. Before we can really help, more input is needed. Such questions as do you have led turn signals all around, new column, four way flashers, lights have never worked with the new harness?
Fill in the blanks and someone will know what you need to do.

Thanks. It's a painless harness on Chevy 350. Steering wheel is new IDIT tilt column. Headlights and tail lights are led. Turn lights on front are bulb. Have led turn flasher and hazard flasher

All worked fine until I tried to hook up brake light switch. As noted, I forgot to unhook battery and grounded the positive wire on brake switch on floor of cab. Blew my turn signal fuse and my wiper fuse. Replaced fuses and headlights and taillights work. Blinkers don't work. Brake lights don't either even though switch is hooked up and has power. I tried hot jumping brake light switch with piece of wire and no luck.

I read on internets that the turn signal and brake lights both run through the turn signal switch. My thoughts are that, in grounding the brake signal switch hot wire, I:
1. Fried my turn signal flasher; and/or
2. Fried my turn signal switch.

Any thoughts or input re how to chase down or test for my problem would be appreciated. Thanks.

I ran through the same mess on a buddy's 52 Studebaker last weekend. After all the troubleshooting we found the the 4-way flasher was on, not off. Check this.
Replace the blinker can with a good one for testing. The switch contacts are pretty healthy so I would think you are ok there. Do you have the GM terminal block attached to the column setup? If so, you have two power feeds. "P" and "L", one from the flasher and one from the brake switch.

Thanks for the response! I've now replaced the blinker can and the block "2 in one" fuse in the fuse box. No luck. I'll check the flashers. A friend suggested I might have fried the bulbs. Going to check that tonight. The blinker switch is "inside" the column. I'll chase the brake switch return wire. I do know it "splits" into two wires under the dash.

I'm unsure why your brake light wire would split under the dash. Not being there to see what's going on and if someone decided they had a better way to hook up you're turn signals leaves us at a disadvantage. Did someone changed the way the instructions from painless and ididit instructed you to wire it? If so, what did they change and why?

It turned out to be the connectors between the column and the wiring harness. Cut them off and hard wired the connections and all works. Thanks for taking the time to help!!!