The Albatross Has (Finally) Dropped From Around My Neck...

Just like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, the albatross hanging from my neck (an inoperable passenger brake light, in my case) has dropped into the ocean and freed me from my life of misery. Ok, it wasn't that bad, but it seemed that way sometimes! :-)

A couple years ago I had noticed that my passenger rear taillight seemed to be not working properly. I didn't think too much of it since I had so much other work to do on the car as I disassembled much of it for paint. I did, however, ask the vendor of the LED sequential taillight kit to replace the passenger side unit. (They did.) I figured it would be fixed when I reassembled everything after paint and that would be that.

Fast forward a couple years. My car is done with paint, and it's pretty much assembled. I replaced just about all of the wiring and switches last year. But the passenger taillight is still dim when the lights are on, and the brake light only works (dimly) when the car is off. When the car is running, the brake light on that side does not work at all. To fix the light, I've wracked my brains and spent stupid money replacing (again) new wiring, taillight housings, the turn signal switch, headlight switch, and even flashers... (I did after all have my share of defective reproduction wiring and switches.)

So today, perhaps out of complete confusion and total despair, I swap in two regular ol' 1157 bulbs, and voila! the passenger tail light and brake light work... I guess I got two bad LED lights in a row for that side? I couldn't get the slick LED backup light bulbs to work either last year, so I stuck with the regular incandescent bulbs there. Just to complete the trifecta of LED aggravation, I removed the LED parking lights on the front of the car (which worked fine!) and went with the 1157s up there too.

So now the only LEDs in the car are in the gauges (which work fine.) And all my lights are operational. I also decided I'm not putting sequential taillights in the '06 like I was considering... Not sure of the moral of the story here—besides having a run of bad luck perhaps—but it's a relief for sure!