2003 Accord Brake Light Switch (Story Time)

[ctechbob]

Keep in mind, these events happened right at the end of a 13 hour shift for me and I should have been at home asleep.

0640 - Wife calls me at work and informs me that 'Spot' our 2003 Accord seems to be slipping in first gear. I sigh and tell her to drive it home gently this afternoon from work and take the Acura until I can get around to messing with it (I'm on duty all weekend).... k love you bye.

---Keep in mind, I just had the trans replaced in 2022 and it only has maybe 20,000 miles on it and has been perfectly maintained--

0730 - I've just gotten home and getting ready to collapse (Thankfully I hadn't taken melatonin yet) and the phone rings again.

'The brake lights on the car won't shut off.'

........'well, crap' (I had the jump box in the garage, plus I'm not keen on just letting the battery in the car run down while it sits there all day and she doesn't have any tools, nor do I really want to ask her to disconnect the battery. The people she works with are useless as well when it comes to cars.)

I make the decision to drive the Acura up to her and just swap cars and bring the Accord home. Keep in mind, it is an hour's drive each way.

Hop in the car, crank the air to stay awake, and drive up to her office. Luckily it is Saturday and traffic is light. On a real workday, I'd have been a ranting and cursing mess by the time I got there. Traffic near her place is a gawdawful mess on the best of weekdays and I don't have the capacity to deal with those idiots, especially not when I'm supposed to be sleeping.

Get to the office, check the trans fluid, its perfect, brake lights are still on. Hop in the Accord and set off for home, driving as gingerly as I can and staying away from other cars since they'll always think I'm stopping and probably be irritated at me.

I started feeling the problem the wife was talking about. It doesn't feel like a slip, but on first throttle tip-in the car feels flat like it is stuck in the mud. Then it picks up a little as you go deeper into the throttle, and then it takes off like it normally would. Very repeatable, and happens every time. Never see or feel any kind of flare or anything that feels like a slip. Pull the shifter down into 1 and start off, the same thing. Pull it down to 2 and start in 2nd and it feels completely normal, so it is isolated to 1st gear.

As I'm pulling into the neighborhood, the TCS (Traction Control) light comes on and it hits me.

--Incoming speculation--

The poor ECU/Car has thought this whole time that my foot has been on the brake. It is pulling timing/fuel when we start out because for whatever reason it thinks, brakes on, low traction, lower torque start, or it does it to protect the trans.

As for the brake lights being stuck on, that is a simple matter of a stupid little rubber bumper on the brake pedal having crumbled and fallen off. The new part is on the way from Amazon, will be here tomorrow and I'll test it on Monday. I have a good idea that the 'slipping' 1st gear will have cleared up without the ECU seeing the brake applied.

Of course, by the time I actually got in bed, I couldn't shut my brain off and now I get to run another 13-hour shift on 4.5 hours of sleep. Yay me.

First-world problems I know, but this is exactly why I keep a spare car on hand. This Accord owes me nothing. Other than the glass fragile BAYA transmission, the rest of the car is largely original. It looks like it was a set piece in a MadMax movie, but the engine/chassis just keeps on rolling.

 

[ctechbob]

Also. I'm sure that Honda has a sound engineering reason for the rubber bumper....

but....

Why would you install a switch that is designed to extend to turn on, over a punched out hole in the metal that is filled with a rubber bumper so that when the bumper ages and crumbles it falls out and lets the switch extend through the hole, making the brake lights stay on?

Is it because the plastic would wear out rubbing against metal?

Or the switch needs to be isolated from vibrations coming through the pedal?

Either way, it is a little bit comical.

 

[Nukeman7]

If the rubber bumper button part doesn't show up tomorrow, you can just tape a penny in its place as a temporary band-aid. I have done this twice in the past and it works.

 

[ctechbob]

If the rubber bumper button part doesn't show up tomorrow, you can just tape a penny in its place as a temporary band-aid. I have done this twice in the past and it works.

I actually have a trim clip sitting in there now. We have a spare car so I just wanted to shut the lights off while it sits in the garage. I'll fix it for real Monday and the Acura can go back to sleep for a while.

 

[eljefino]

The bumper is for NVH reasons.

 

[meep]

My boss at work just had very similar problems with a Santa Fe. Being an aerospace engineer, she identified that there was too much of a gap between the brake lever and stop lamp switch and shimmed it with something like a folded business card. She and her husband were driving it like that for a while. But then the battery went flat a couple of times, and then it randomly simply wouldn’t accelerate. Her husband became equally stumped, and frustrated. Hyundai boards knew exactly what it was, and $6 bought 4 of them on Amazon - “stop switch rubber stop,” or something like that. I included a bag of generics in my next order and left them on her desk; she’d bought me a cup of coffee the day before. (All’s fair).

 

[ctrcbob]

Keep in mind, these events happened right at the end of a 13 hour shift for me and I should have been at home asleep.

0640 - Wife calls me at work and informs me that 'Spot' our 2003 Accord seems to be slipping in first gear. I sigh and tell her to drive it home gently this afternoon from work and take the Acura until I can get around to messing with it (I'm on duty all weekend).... k love you bye.

---Keep in mind, I just had the trans replaced in 2022 and it only has maybe 20,000 miles on it and has been perfectly maintained--

0730 - I've just gotten home and getting ready to collapse (Thankfully I hadn't taken melatonin yet) and the phone rings again.

'The brake lights on the car won't shut off.'

........'well, crap' (I had the jump box in the garage, plus I'm not keen on just letting the battery in the car run down while it sits there all day and she doesn't have any tools, nor do I really want to ask her to disconnect the battery. The people she works with are useless as well when it comes to cars.)

I make the decision to drive the Acura up to her and just swap cars and bring the Accord home. Keep in mind, it is an hour's drive each way.

Hop in the car, crank the air to stay awake, and drive up to her office. Luckily it is Saturday and traffic is light. On a real workday, I'd have been a ranting and cursing mess by the time I got there. Traffic near her place is a gawdawful mess on the best of weekdays and I don't have the capacity to deal with those idiots, especially not when I'm supposed to be sleeping.

Get to the office, check the trans fluid, its perfect, brake lights are still on. Hop in the Accord and set off for home, driving as gingerly as I can and staying away from other cars since they'll always think I'm stopping and probably be irritated at me.

I started feeling the problem the wife was talking about. It doesn't feel like a slip, but on first throttle tip-in the car feels flat like it is stuck in the mud. Then it picks up a little as you go deeper into the throttle, and then it takes off like it normally would. Very repeatable, and happens every time. Never see or feel any kind of flare or anything that feels like a slip. Pull the shifter down into 1 and start off, the same thing. Pull it down to 2 and start in 2nd and it feels completely normal, so it is isolated to 1st gear.

As I'm pulling into the neighborhood, the TCS (Traction Control) light comes on and it hits me.

--Incoming speculation--

The poor ECU/Car has thought this whole time that my foot has been on the brake. It is pulling timing/fuel when we start out because for whatever reason it thinks, brakes on, low traction, lower torque start, or it does it to protect the trans.

As for the brake lights being stuck on, that is a simple matter of a stupid little rubber bumper on the brake pedal having crumbled and fallen off. The new part is on the way from Amazon, will be here tomorrow and I'll test it on Monday. I have a good idea that the 'slipping' 1st gear will have cleared up without the ECU seeing the brake applied.

View attachment 221287

Of course, by the time I actually got in bed, I couldn't shut my brain off and now I get to run another 13-hour shift on 4.5 hours of sleep. Yay me.

First-world problems I know, but this is exactly why I keep a spare car on hand. This Accord owes me nothing. Other than the glass fragile BAYA transmission, the rest of the car is largely original. It looks like it was a set piece in a MadMax movie, but the engine/chassis just keeps on rolling.

Thought in was reading a book.

 

[ctechbob]

My boss at work just had very similar problems with a Santa Fe. Being an aerospace engineer, she identified that there was too much of a gap between the brake lever and stop lamp switch and shimmed it with something like a folded business card. She and her husband were driving it like that for a while. But then the battery went flat a couple of times, and then it randomly simply wouldn’t accelerate. Her husband became equally stumped, and frustrated. Hyundai boards knew exactly what it was, and $6 bought 4 of them on Amazon - “stop switch rubber stop,” or something like that. I included a bag of generics in my next order and left them on her desk; she’d bought me a cup of coffee the day before. (All’s fair).

Yep, exactly where mine are coming from. Looked up the Honda part number, slammed it into Amazon and grabbed a box of 4. Certainly something I'm not seeking out the OEM Honda part for, although the local dealer probably has one, Amazon will bring it to me.

 

[meep]

This is the way

 

[BrendanC]

the accord in my signature also had the bumper fall off. i simply replaced the brake switch and adjusted it to not need the bumper. it’s been like that for a year and almost 30k miles now

 

[Sayjac]

Brake light always on, common issue on older Hondas. Telltale sign, broken pieces of plug/stopper found on floor/floormat. Fixed one for older neighbor with 04 Civic last year.

 

[ctechbob]

Brake light always on, common issue on older Hondas. Telltale sign, broken pieces of plug/stopper found on floor/floormat. Fixed one for older neighbor with 04 Civic last year.

Well.....yea, if you're the sort of person that cleans their car out on a regular basis. My wife, god bless her, not so much. Cars are simple appliances to her and our schedules don't meet up enough that I can keep up with tidying the car up much.

 

[ctechbob]

Just as some closure.

Yep, Honda does some odd programming in the ECU for takeoff with brake applied. Replaced the bumper this morning, the oddball feeling of first gear is completely solved, and I can completely emulate the problem by very lightly applying the brake and then taking off from a stop.

$4 fix and the Acura can go back to sleep in the garage, just in time for some potential hail storms this morning.