Hello everyone, newest member here. I've had my '89 Pickup with close to 200,000 miles for about a year now and while she's a bit rough around the edges, she's been really good to me.

One thing I'm not great at diagnosing is electrical issues. What's going on now is that when I have my tail lights running, the brake lights are only barely perceptible. When driving during the day they light up, however, at night when I flip the head and tails on no one driving behind me can see when I'm braking.

I did a quick search of the forum, but didn't see anything specific pop up. Anyone else experience this issue or know where a good place to start checking things out would be?

 

I think those bulbs only go in one way so you probably dont have em backwards. Clean the contacts in the tail light housing. Check the wiring near the lights and make sure its not cut/chewed/burned/fried/melted.

 

Its a double element bulb. Running lights on- one element lit. Brakes applied-both lit.

I would do what jetas said...Inspect and clean.

Turn on your running light and check that only ONE element is lit.

 

maybe pull the bulb out n make sure both filaments are good. It it only has one filament and somehow still works then there is your problem

 

After taking a closer look I can see that both elements are lighting up with the running lights on, and the wires going to that bottom bulb are a bit chewed though and rusted on both driver and passenger sides.

The corrosion is right where the wire goes through the grommet, so no room to really fix it especially considering the grommets and bulb sockets look non-removable. The other parts of both light housings aren't in great shape either, so it looks like my best option is to just replace both.

I found a couple OEM sets on ebay that look to be in way better shape than mine, so I should be good to go. Thanks for the replies.

 

Usually when the lights are dim it is a ground problem. Since the truck is a bit old I would take the ground connection off and remove the rust as much as you could before ordering a chinese set of lights.