No brake lights! Problem solved!

[Fighting Irish]

Just replaced mine today. My wife was driving her Fit behind me this morning because she had to take the Fit in for a recall ( Honda recalling 700,000 Fit models over engine fears - 97k in U.S. — Autoblog

Of course, like a woman, she says "I think your brake lights weren't working or something, it was hard to tell. The sun was shining." I don't know how it can be hard to tell if brake lights are working. They either are or they aren't. Anyways, I checked, and sure enough, the damn switch was stuck in the off position. Went to the dealer, paid $15 with tax for a new stop lamp switch. PITA, but I'm glad she caught it before I got pulled over. Also, the switch is kinda tricky- it comes in the box with the plunger thing stuck all the way out. When you install the new switch, turn the car on, press the brake pedal down as far as you can, and pull the plunger out as far as you can. The plunger thing can be hard to pull out, a little more force than I thought. So I spent about 2 hours trying to figure out how to adjust the pedal so that the damn lights would turn off (Don't do that). Wish I had known that before I went down that route. Here are some pictures to show what I'm talking about



As you can see, the switch (white thing connected to yellow plug with black base, small black plunger is touching a nickel I had inserted in there temporarily) has a plunger which is pushed almost all the way into the switch. You don't want to have a nickel in there, but instead press down on the brake all the way, and pull out the plunger at the same time. This resets the switch (I think). I hope it saves at least someone a little aggravation. Now I could replace the switch in <2 minutes.

As an aside, my wife used to drive a ford escort. While attempting to pull it into the garage one day for an oil change, I had to floor it just to get the thing to move- obvious problem with the auto tranny. After I asked my wife why she didn't mention it to me, she said "oh, I thought the car was just getting old". But, at least she gave me a solid "yes" on my next 2 car purchases...