My son called me to ask how to turn brake lights off. He was at his office before work and realized brake lights would not go off. I asked him to try bumping the brake pedal and finally removing the tail lights, however he could not access the light connectors due to trim fasteners, and the rear window brake light is difficult to access.

He would up leaving it and his mother drove jumper cables to him for a jump late in day.

When I got home, I took a look and first noticed some black rubber pieces lying on the floorbard. I didn't know what they were until I looked at brake light switch and saw switch plunger fully extended through a hole in the stop plate on the brake pedal. It hit me the black rubber part was a stop inserted in the hole. Part had dried and cracked w/ age until it fell out.

I picked up the replacement part during week to install on Saturday, and thought it would be easy. Push the stop into hole until it snaps in place. New stop is a harder plastic, perhaps nylon part, not rubber.

On my first attempt, I realized I could not push the pedal far enough away from the switch for room to install the stop. After thinking for a while, I didn't see any option but to "bleed" the pedal to a lower position. I used a short stick jammed against the seat front to create brake pedal pressure and cracked LF brake bleeder for just a second. This created a little gap, so I repeated to realize about 1" gap. Carefully to avoid bumping stick holding brake pedal depressed, I lay down on floorboard and inserted the switch stop.

Amazing what problems and effort to install a tiny piece of plastic costing $4.

Regards

 

Same thing happened to me last year. I superglued 2 pennies together to where that rubber piece was supposed to go and it has worked since then.

 

pennies... $.02 fix...

 

I also thought about gluing something in place. If the failure were a little more benign, I might do this. Consequence is dead battery in short order due to brake light load.

regards

 

I had the same problem with both my Vigor and my TL, I just used a nut and bolt that was the same size as the rubber insert, hasn't failed yet.