1973 Mustang - No brake lights

Good day all, & thanks to those that created this site. This is sort of long, but thorough:

I bought/rescued a '73 Mustang Fastback a couple of months ago & have been working on a few things myself. One of those being the tail light harness.

I found a guy locally parting out some 71-73's & scavenged the tail light harness from one of his, that looked a lot better than mine. We cut the loom to where I had plenty of wiring to work with.

Last night I decided to graft it in. It took some new bulbs, & some pressing on the connections of the sockets, and currently everything works pretty good, turn signals, hazards, & park lights, with the exception of the brake lights,

After I made all if the initial connections, I went thru the lights, & when I stepped on the brake pedal, I saw them come on for a second, then nothing after that.

I checked all of the wires with a test light, above where I grafted everything together & I am getting power to everything except the black & brown wires. I imagine one is for the back up lamps & the other is the brake lights.

I checked the fuses, figuring if the sockets had arced or had a bad ground , that it would have blown the fuse. But not the case. They all appeared to be intact.

I tried to google a layout for the fuse box, but was unsuccessful.

I found a forum in a Torino group, from the google search, a Torino owner with a similar problem as mine, and one of the responses was that he needed o get a new turn signal switch, as the brake light signal is routed through the switch.

Could this be the case for me as well? Or is there a fuse I may have missed?

I'm thinking about taking the one I scavenged out & putting the old one back in, fixing the one broken wire on the passenger side, since it's kind of scabbed together already..

Thank you in advance for any advice!

Do your turn signals work? Turn signal and brake lights share the same wires from the turn signal switch to the lights. Check to make sure that you are getting power to the brake light switch and then out when the brake pedal is pushed.

By the way, please introduce yourself and your car in the introduction section of the forum. And, we like pictures.

Brake light power comes from a circuit breaker near the passenger side (yellow wire on the other side of the CB), then goes to the e-flasher, then to the brake switch. If e-flasher works, then it is further downstream. After brake switch, it goes to the turn signal switch and out to the rear. TS Switch is known to be a part that needs replacing every couple of years.

Thanks for your responses Don, and midlife! I found my method of checking for brake lights wasn't the best...it's a pain when doing some things by yourself.

All is well, & all lights are operational.

And Don, I introduced myself with pictures, in the intro forum...just now.

Many thanks again!

What did you find that corrected the problem?

Yes, please let us know what you found and how you found it. Sharing information is one of the great things about this form. You'll be helping someone else that has the same problem.

I apologize for the delay in my response. I forgot my password, & then got busy with a few other things.

Turns out there wasn't any problems with the brake lights at all....it was just my method of trying to wedge a dowel between the pedal & seat bottom. By the time I got to the rear of the car, the seat gave just enough to release the tension on the the pedal & switch.

I finally just set my my phone up on a stool and recorded going through all of the lights...like I said, it's a pain in the a** when doing some of these things without an extra set of eyes.

Again, my apologies for the delay, & thanks again for the responses.

P.S. Here is my before and after...

wow. Nice transformation!

wow. Nice transformation!

Click to expand...

Thank you sir!

Welcome from Omaha!

Welcome from Omaha!

Click to expand...

Thank you!