brought to my attention last night, is this just a bulb replacement? i thought if the bulbs were bad the brakes wouldnt work either.

 

Well if you have dual filament bulbs its certainly possible for one filament to go bad and one to remain working. With both tails out like that my first guess would be to check the fuse, but then again if the fuse went bad would you still have the use of brake lights? Check the fuse and the bulbs, therein lyes your problem most likely (not sure tho).

 

the bulbs are dual filiment but i would find it odd that both of them would go out at the same time. you may want to check your relay box and make sure that teh relay is working. also there is a relay/switch on teh brake pedal (i think) that may be out as well. this happened to my friends volvo and it turned out that the brake pedal relay was bad. i have had the bulb burn out and my parking lights didnt work on the one side, but the brake lights worked on both sides.

 

I *thought* there was a separate fuse for the parking lamp circuit. Perhaps that's it.

 

experiment time....

 

Given that our cars have only one bulb carrying dual puposes, it's probably just the tails out. When you "experiment", make sure you snap the bulbs in place (you have to hear them click). Otherwise, you may be experimenting in other (wrong) directions...

 

Both tailight filliments blowing at the same time is not that unlikely. If one goes out the voltage spikes on the other and tend to cause it to blow soon after. It happened to me.

If you have to replace on side due to a blown filiment, replace the other as well (since it might be damaged. Tail light bulbs are cheap.

 

well before i played around with fuses and relays, i decided to stick to the "Occams razor" theory in which the less complicated solution is usually the correct one, just the bulbs...six dollar solution.

 

good cal but i tend to go with the chaos theory of what can go wrong will go wrong. i usually look at all posible faults and fix everything that is wrong. takes a little longer to diagnose but you get the problem the first time