Brakes light when clutch is pressed

[Skip]

My brake lights light up when I press the clutch and/or put the car in reverse (reverse lights do not illuminate when in reverse either). Also – I think someone noodled with the wiring because the parking/riding lights and head lights illuminate when lamps are in closed position vs. only parking/riding lights illuminate when lamps are in closed position. *shrug* I searched threads in lighting and signals for my braking issue but came up with nothing that was similar. Could the brake lights be a grounding thing? Any help would be appreciated.

[Manta Rallier]

I am assuming that the Kadett/GT have the same pedal setup as the Manta/Ascona in saying this. The clutch and brake pedals are both mounted to a common shaft in a frame; this shaft is actaully a bolt with a locking device which can be removed. It's possible that when you move the clutch pedal, the mounting shaft may be rotating a bit and the brake pedal moving a bit too, enough to actuate the brake light switch. This would not be any surprise for a car around 35 years old; the original grease gets hard and sticky. If the brake pedal moved, then it could actuate the brake light switch; this is a small switch near the top of the brake pedal lever; it will be obvious how it works if you look up there.

Depress the clutch and see of the brake pedal moves enough to . If so, then figure out how to lubricate the shaft and make it so that each pedal does not move with the other. WD40 is a start but is not a good longe term lube. Ideally, remoive the pedal shaft and lube it with somethig like Lubriplate (not lithium grease), but this might be some work to do.

See if that is one problem solved!

Regards,
Mark B.

[baz]

whats the firewall like? is it flexing when you push the clutch down? if so it could be moving the brake pedal and working the switch

[jlthunder]

Originally Posted by Skip My brake lights light up when I press the clutch and/or put the car in reverse (reverse lights do not illuminate when in reverse either). Also – I think someone noodled with the wiring because the parking/riding lights and head lights illuminate when lamps are in closed position vs. only parking/riding lights illuminate when lamps are in closed position. *shrug* I searched threads in lighting and signals for my braking issue but came up with nothing that was similar. Could the brake lights be a grounding thing? Any help would be appreciated.

My GT is doing the same thing. When I press the clutch, my brake lights turn on and off for a moment. I haven't looked into it yet but I will let you know what I find out this winter. Lights and reverse lights are operating fine.

Jeff

[namba209]

Originally Posted by Skip Could the brake lights be a grounding thing? Any help would be appreciated.

The brake lite switch supplies power to the brake lites when the brake pedal pivots on the shaft. All the lites in the rear of the car have their own ground wire. All the previous posts have the right idea, something is allowing the brake pedal to move, actuating the switch, putting power to the lites. HTH.

[George]

Check and see if the brake return spring is hooked up.Had the same problem with the brake lights coming on when I pressed the clutch.The spring was broken and just hanging by one end.A new return spring from the autoparts fixed the problem.

[saxybiker]

Our 72 GT does the same thing. Has for the past 4 years. Other than being rather disconcerting to follow behind , it has not caused any problems. It is on the long list of "little" irritating problems, which will be fixed after the list of more immediate problems.

We figured it was a pedal adjustment needing to be made.

Vickie & Allen

[DESTEC]

What Baz is mentioning actually happened to me on one Opel: the floor pan (firewall) had a hairline crack in it and when I pushed the clutch down, the clutch pedal-brake pedal assy would move foreward just enough, and the Brake Lights would come on. If this is your problem, drill 1 pilot hole (1/16") at each end of the crack to keep it from going further, and have someone weld over the crack. Make sure the brake switch retaining nut is not loose.

I would think that this is unrelated to you head light problem.

[DESTEC]

Skip,

You may have mistated your "Vs." sentence re the park lights Vs. the headlights: if I read it as written, you say the head lights are ON when down and OFF when down. If you can shed some light on this maybe we can ferrret the bugaboo out.

JJ

[Skip]

Thanks for all the feedback on the Brake lights. I will get under there and look closely to see whether or not the mounting shaft is moving or the brake spring is hanging or whether the floor pan is the culprit.

As for the Head lights DESTEC, when the light switch is ON, the headlights go ON no matter what their position is (up or down). I was under the impressions that when the headlights are in the down position and the switch is turned ON, that only the parking/riding lights go ON and the headlights stay OFF. Hope I am clearer this time…Sorry - Not used to describing such things.

[DESTEC]

Skip:

NOW that helps. Once I modified my Headlight relay and years later forgot that I did. One day I noticed the exact thing which I know was not right: the headlights came on with the switch (meant for only running lights to come on)

What I did and forgot that I did was replaced a bad Headlight relay which has (4) terminal 87 outputs that are electrically isolated from each other output; with a 3-terminal output relay. So having 4 wires and only 3 terminals to hook them to, I put the Headlight Wire (White-Yellow) on any one of the Gray (black, red, green) wire terminals. NOW you can see if you turn on your running light switch, your headlights will come on too.

Check your Head Light Relay; the stock relay has (4) terminal 87 outputs.

HTH,

JJ

[namba209]

Skip, in order to fix your headlites and make them work correctly, if everything is working the way it should, depending on the year of your GT, you'll probably have to pull the rotating mechanism of one or both headlites. And contact DESTEC to purchase one of his outstanding, exploded view, color-coded, plastic laminated, GT schematics. Whew! I'm gonna guess that the microswitches in the buckets, attached to the rear of the rotating mechanisms are either out of adjustment or sticking and the PO just wired the relay into the parking lite switch as JJ suggested. There are quite a few threads on this site relating to the care and feeding of the mechanisms and the microswitches, so I'll suggest using the search engine and spend a few hours reading all about the headlight system. Also there is an excellant tech article on the OANA website by Wayne Torman on how to remove the headlite system. You'll need to read that to cause minimum headaches and damage to your car. Oh yeah, it's not a weekend job either. HTH.