Yeah, that loose bulb fit in the sccket issue is a thing. One late night many years ago, I had a police cruiser follow me into my driveway because a tail light was out. (I think he was having a quiet, boring night shift.) After a brief discussion re my recent whereabouts. a hand slap to the side of my 68 Countryman re-lit the bulb.

Willie B, thanks for your input. I've always said and will continue to say that this board has the smartest guys on earth.

 

Your suggestion of a bad bulb was spot on. I did not mention that I made a few minor changes during my "Rolling Restoration".  One of them was changing the rear lights to clear lenses and of course the red light bulbs. 

 

I disconnected the brake light switch and jumped the wires. Instead of messing with the wiring; I just took out the rear bulbs one at a time. The culprit revealed itself right away. The bulb works but is grounding itself. Thank you Willie B. It wasn't the Prince of Darkness, just me following in his foot steps.

Do your headlights have the small bulb in the lower part of them for daytime running lights? If so, this could be a combination of issues. Mis-wired connection for one side of the front yellow running lights and one of the front daytime running lights. Combine that with a bad ground of one of the rear light bulb sockets that would make it ground thru the bulb and light up any bulb in that circuit. Not talking about the wire that grounds the tail light assembly but the actual bulb holder ground to the light assembly. I had to rotate the bulb holder in the light assembly one time for a poor socket ground that did something like what you describe.

Any ideas of what is happening? I've had this mini for over 30 years with very few electrical issues. I had to disconnect the front headlights and tail lights because of the repaint. I did label all the wires. Pretty sure reconnected the headlight and tail light wires correctly. This never happened before.

 

 

 

 

...The Prince of Darkness strikes again !

 

 

"LUUUUCAAAASSSS?" or for those of us old enough to remember I Love Lucy:

"Lucas, you got some splainin' to do!"

I get up at 4am, to meet my GF at her house. It is pouring rain and very dark. A couple of things that are happening during the beginning of the drive. 1) the fan belt is squealing 2) the 3rd brake light that I added years ago is on solid. No time to stop on the highway, nor do I want to as it's still raining hard. My mini is still running good, so I drive on.

 

When I got to her house, the rain has slowed. I turned the lights off and shut off the engine but then decided to do a little investigation. Restarted the mini and stepped on the brake pedal.  The funny thing is- when I step on the brake pedal, the headlights came on. WTH. I could only laugh.