Hello, anyone that will take the time to walk me through isolating why my brake lights stopped working? I've checked the fuse and the bulb. I see in the shop manual that there is a stop light switch. Doesn't show much detail. Any help would be highly appreciated . Thank you,

 

The stop light switch is attached to the brake pedal. Are you familiar enough with a multimeter to test the switch? Can you use one well enough to test for voltage at the fuse, switch, and bulbs?
BTW: The stop lights get their ground from the body metal behind the whole tail light assembly. Pull the whole assembly out of the truck, and check where the assembly picks up ground right behind it.

Does that help?
Pat☺

 

Thank you very much, I will get after your suggestions as soon as the rain stops here. I did order a new stop switch. The trucks 31+ years old and it wasn't all that much. Let me ask you something about the ground and the switch. First , the same bulb is for the running lights and the brake lights. They're just dual filament like a lot of vehicles. If the tail lights are working wouldn't that be using the same ground as the brake lights? Also, the stop switch on the brake pedal also kills the cruise control when you hit the brakes. If the cruise control and brake pedal are working correctly wouldn't that mean the stop switch probably isn't the problem? Thank you so much for your time.

 

If your tail lights are working, the ground through that bulb-socket is almost certainly good. (Note that in the '93, there is a ground wire at the back of the truck that travels back to the engine compartment. The bed is mounted on rubber isolators, which means the metal back there is not a good ground. 2ToyGuy's '87 might have a grounded bed.)

The stop light switch is double pole, with a normally open pole for the stop light and a normally closed pole for the cruise control. So it is possible that you have 1/2 of the switch broken, but that is less likely (usually, the whole switch is smashed, or there is a mechanical problem keeping the switch from moving). So keep that new switch in the box until you confirm what's going on. In your case, I would suspect an open wire somewhere.

As 2ToyGuy hints, you need a multimeter. The electrons you're looking for are just too darn small!

 

An update. Don't know my best option but I've seem to isolate at least the beginning of the problem. At one time the owner before me had a hot wire wedged into the brake light fuse under the dash. The hot wire was to power the door locks with a remote. I had nothing but trouble with it so I disconnected that hot wire and never thought any more about it until now. The 15 A fuse for the brake lights is not only very loose but gets extremely hot to the touch. When I throw a test light on the fuse with the brake depressed I do have power and the brake lights work. It doesn't take long while driving for that fuse to back out enough to cause a repeat of the problem. When I removed the fuse to try to think about how to deal with this it was very hot to the touch so I may have a bigger problem than just a loose fuse. Not a sob story but I'm not in a financial position to take this to a shop and get a $500 bill for labor. If anyone has some more ideas I'm an open book. Thanks all................