OK, this has me stumped (btw, hi everyone, new here). I have a 2006 Civic Hybrid boring old stock model with no mods and I'm poor and stubborn so I fix everything myself.

My two side break lights went out when it rained (I live in CA, rain is a rare thing here), but the central strip is just fine. I assumed that two lights out meant fuses and not bulbs, but an exhaustive search of the fuse diagram revealed no relevant fuses. I pulled anything that could be even remotely related and they were all fine. So then I thought it had to be the break switch, it seemed to be fine, maybe with a smidge of corrosion, but I replaced it with a brand new one and no dice... same issue. The caveat there is that I only replaced the switch, I haven't done anything with the plug yet, which is where there's a little yellow... so maybe that's it.

So then I did the simplest thing last, and looked at the bulbs, and they are fine, just as expected. I replaced them anyway, no dice. I ran the wire superficially and there are no obvious breaks or anything.

So I'm a little stumped. I guess I need to cut off the plug to the break switch and replace it with another one, but the thing is the wires seem fine, all the corrosion seems superficial and replacing the switch seems like a pain.

I'm curious if anyone here has any thoughts before I do that?

Pictures below.

-Mike

 

it might be a fuse..? honestly i have no idea what it could possibly be, but having both go out at the same time points to a fuse. the third light still works likely because it's on a separate fuse due to being LED (?)

 

The solution ended up being a dumb one. There actually isn't a break light fuse, I thought it was a fuse at first too. It ended up being the bulbs. I replaced the bulbs first, but it turns out the auto parts store gave me monofilament ones and the break lights need dual filament. When I got the right bulbs it worked fine. 🤦‍♂️

In the meantime I had replaced the break switch and break switch wire trying to figure out what was wrong. Oh well.