i have been going through brake light switches lately and dont know why, 3 days ago i went and got a brand new switch and today i noticed my brake lights not working, i touched the switch and it was super hot and the plastic parts inside were melted why is this please help. thank you in advance.

 

If your not blowing fuses, check your brake light bulbs & make sure they are the proper ones. The OEM bulbs suck down 100 watts as it is, if someone put even more "power hungry" bulbs in the 4 positions, that might be causing the probs. Only thing I can think of, anyway...

 

Alternately, if a wire has rubbed somewhere and is shorted to ground (or at least dumping a lot of current to ground) you'd be dumping a lot of power through the switch. That would most likely blow a fuse, though.

-=Russ=-

 

Thanks for the info guys. i havent been blowing fuses though. but the internals of the brake light switch are plastic and for some reason, the switch gets super hot and the switch melts inside. anyone?

 

Didn't like my wrong bulbs theory, eh?

OK, try this- you have a bad stop light warning relay in the CPU.

Oh, BTW, I forgot about the "high mounted" stop light bulb- make that 135 watts of power that winds its way through that switch

 

It also could be as simple as dirty connections. On my truck I had that problem. I eventually raced it back and cleaned every connection to the bulbs and it went away.
I think it's because the lamps are going to try to pull the same power no matter what. so if you are getting a voltage drop at a connection, it has to make up the difference some how and pulls higher amps.
this is my second electrical question to answer tonight. hmm

 

thanks everyone, i am going to get a new switch today and all new bulbs and see if this helps at all.