When I brake in my X type, my right tail light lights up all weird. The reverse light comes on and my actual brake light shines but very weakly. Same goes for the top most light. Left tail assembly lights up just fine. I thought maybe bulbs at first but that wouldn't explain why the other lights light up when they don't normally.

 

Georgio, from the sounds of things, you have 1 of 2 issues going on. The more likely senario is that you have a bulb that is not fully installed and it is causing power to be shunted to places that it shouldn't be. Specifically, I would be looking at the brake light bulb. I would venture to guess that you recently (within the last month or so) replaced some bulbs on the right tail light. I would try removing all the bulbs from the right tail light and then apply the brake to verify that your 3rd brake light now works properly. From there, start installing the bulbs one at a time until the problem reoccurs.

The other possibility is that you have a bad ground wire coming off the plug for the right tail light and the electricity is trying to find an alternate path which just happens to be through the reverse light.

If you need more info, let me know.

 

So it looks like there actually may be a grounding issue. Not sure yet but i discovered the wiring harness that plugs into the tail light has some frayed wires and one of them even appears to be disconnected entirely somehow. The broken one is a thin grey wire, there's two of them, one is fine and the other is broken in two. Changing the bulbs did nothing, and taking them out one at a time actually resulted in the entire brake light assembly failing to light up.

 

Georgio, from the sounds of things, those "grey" wires are actually black wires. yes, those are the ground wires for the tail light. Those would cause what you are seeing. The best advice that I can give you is to get yourself some butt connectors (sold at most automotive places or at any hardware store). You are going to want the red ones (they are color coded based on the wire size that you can put in them). You can then cut out the bad section of wire and put a butt connector on each end and install a new piece of wire between them. The big thing will be that you want to cut back far enough that the wire inside has a nice shiny copper color to it. If you install the butt connector on the wire that is dark grey/brown in color, you are going to have issues in the near future with ground issues.

If you need more detailed information, let me know. If you don't feel comfortable using the butt connectors (should be fine as they are inside the vehicle in a dry location), I have a few other ways to fix this, granted, they are a bit more labor intensive, but will give a more permanent fix too.

 

Would it be safe and feasible to simple solder them together and use electrical tape or heat sheaths to cover it? I'm quite good with my soldering iron and I have experience using it.

 

Georgio, if the problem is limited to say an inch or so of wiring, then yes. But, if you get things too short, then you are going to be putting a lot of stress on that one wire and it may be pulled apart in the near future. That is why I was saying to add in a piece of wiring to make it a little longer. But, like I mention, you want to make sure that you get to good wiring before attempting a repair.

When it comes to covering the repair, the stuff I ultimately recommend is Raychem. Once you use it, you will understand why I love it. But, normal heat shrink will be acceptable in this case since it is inside the car, not exposed to weather.