I've had my 98' SR5 for almost 5 years now and have never had a problem with it until now. A few weeks ago, I noticed that whenever I depressed the brake pedal in my car, before I turned the ignition, the backlighting on the dash would light up. Today, I got into my car, started it, tried to put it into gear but I could not shift out of park. I called my buddy who knows a lot about cars and he told me that he is 70% sure it is a bad switch in the braking mechanism that is not telling the transmission that the brake pedal is depressed and therefore not enabling me to switch my car into gear. He is a Porsche guy and mainly deals with those, so he can't be positive. I was wondering if anyone has run into this problem before and if there is something I can do to fix this without taking it into the shop. I used the shift override to put it into gear, so i can use the car, but I wanna get my car running properly. Any help?

 

I would check to see that the brake lights come on when you hit the brakes.
May be as simple as adjusting the brake switch at the pedal


FSM LINK
http://www.ncttora.com/fsm/index.html

would link you to the vehicle specific one but you never said 4runner or taco

 

Oh, sorry. It's a 4Runner. I will check out that link. The brake lights do come on by the way.

 

Well I am actually sorry that is not the simple adjust the brake switch!
at least the one that controls the lights but yeah there may be another one
I wouldn't know. Maybe a relay?!?

 

Had that problem in a Mazda 626. Turned out that the brake light/tail light bulb had fused the 2 filaments together (brake light filament fused to tail light filament). The stealer wanted almost $1000 to fix. I fixed it for $2.50, I just replaced the bulb and FIXED!
Remove your brake light bulb and you can see if they are fused together.

 

the filaments fusing really made it so you couldn't shift out of park?!?!?!?!?

 

Ok. I took it into the dealership today. The brake lights, by the way, I was wrong about. I found out yesterday when I was checking all the fuses myself that they were not working. But I still figured it was the Brake Safety Switch that was the problem. I was wrong. My trailer hitch hookup had shorted out and since the previous owner had wired it to the break lights electrical system, it blew those fuses, in turn making it impossible to shift. Problem solved, unfortunately, not by me, but its solved and a much cheaper fix than I was expecting. What kills me is that I should of known better... I saw the smoke coming out of the hookup after I changed the fuses the first time. Durrrr...