Dash brake light stays on

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PghTom

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My 1972 Valiant emergency brake light (dash-red square light) stays on when I turn the engine off. —— When I turn the engine on, the emergency brake light goes off.
1972 Valiant, 8cyl 318 engine. 96,000 original miles.
Too make sure that the red light does not run the battery down, I take the negative post off the battery when not running the car.
Hope you can help
 
The e-brake switch is in parallel with the brake system warning switch. Go under the hood and:
- Check your brake fluid
- Disconnect the single black wire to the switch on the MC or the proportioning valve (that tells you that half of the brake system has failed), and see if the light goes off. This brake light is also the Brake Warning light, used to tell you that the brake system has an issue.
- If this turns the light out, then have the brake system checked if you are not mechanical. If you are, and you think the brake system is alright, then go through the procedure to move the brake warning switch's piston to the center (off) position. This usually involves opening a bleed screw and pushing a bit of fluid out of one half of the system or another to get the switch's piston to move to the center position (warning light off).

Beware: your brake system MC may have partially failed internally and is allowing pressure from the fronts to bleed to the rear or vice versa, and that is causing this brake warning switch to activate so you may indeed have a brake system problem; that is what it is there for! If you drive with this problem and you then have an external brake system leak, you will have NO brakes.
 
nm9stheham said:
The.............................
Click to expand...

I think he has "other problems"

The warning lamp should be dead with the key "off" so the E brake and warning lamp switches should be out of this equation

To the op, you need to figure out WHERE and WHY this thing is getting power

You may have a wiring cross (you might say short) that is causing a back-feed into this circuit

Find the warning lamp switch under the hood. Follow the brake lines down from the master cylinder. There will be a brass block with several brake lines and ONE wire. Unplug that wire

Go in as nm9 suggested, find the E brake switch on the E brake linkage and unhook that wire.

Now see if the problem still exists.........I bet it does

With the problem "showing" IE key "off" take a lamp or meter and hook to either the E brake wire or the warning switch wire to ground. See if you have power there

If you do you need to find where it's coming from

The way the warning lamp works is like this.................

Power comes from the key............up to one side of the lamp..........out of the lamp and branches off...........one wire goes to the E brake

One wire goes to the hydraulic brake warning switch

If either of these switches are activated, the lamp sees a ground
 
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