Good Evening everyone,

I am fairly new to this forum as I have recently purchased a rather clean Ford Focus mk1 as I thought it would be the best option for a first car. Everything about the car is fantastic despite its age, good brakes and smooth gearbox and overall a safe option considering my experience.

However, there are one or two problems that plague my car, specifically the rear brake lights, they do not light up when the brake pedal is depressed, only the boot brake light works.

The odd thing is that when the exterior lights are turned on, these lights also turn on. From my understanding, when the brake pedal is depressed, these tail lights are to shine brighter in this situation, but they do not do so.

First thing I checked was the bulbs to see if they were defective, and they looked fine (from my untrained eyes). Next thing I check were the fuses for the rear tail lights, and the fuse was intact. After a lot of head scratching, I thought it would be best to see if anyone else has experienced any of these problems before.

Any suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated.

My car is a Ford Focus LX 1.6 Hatchback from 2002 in a sort of burgundy red that I don't fancy very much but still a great car nevertheless. :)

Are they the correct bulbs?

IIRC they should have 2 contacts on the bases due to them being dual filament bulbs.

There is also a possibility that the bulbs (if correct twin filament ones) are somehow reversed so that the brake element is lit so when the tail light element lights up (and being only 5w compared to the brake elements being 21w) they are too dim to notice.

Sorry about the late reply, we had an unexpected loss in the family.

I have found out that the brake light bulbs that were inside were faulty despite looking intact, and the 5w setting was too dim to notice. Managed to replace them with new working ones, though i'm not sure how long they'll last.

Sorry to hear the bad news.

Thanks for getting back to us though.