the thing is when i turn on my ignition switch to turn on the stero.. not turn on the car just to turn on the stereo my reverse lights automatically turn on.. any ideas why is it doing this?

 

After you start the car do the reverse lights stay on?? There is a switch on the side of the tranny that turns them on, its a 2 wire plug on the drivers side of the trans . If you remove that there is a little ball bearing in the end that goes into the trans . Its activated when you put it in reverse , the ball bearing gets pushed in and makes a connection. Sounds like the spring that holds that little ball out is stuck or broken . Either that or you have a wiring problem but most times if nobody has hacked up the wiring and got things crossed its the switch.

 

the reverse lights dont stay on when i turn the car on ... only when i open the switch and this had happened before and went away.. and now its back so not sure what is wrong

 

hang on.. Your reverse lights come on with the key turned to accessory power? I don't think that's supposed to happen at all, but I'm not 100% certain. My battery is junk, or I'd test that theory myself.

Or are you saying you turn the key to "run" and that happens?

 

no its not suppose to happen.. and thats why i dont know what to do ... when ever i turn my key to accessory power my reverse lights come on ... and dont know why i think its a wire problem but dont know what wires run to it.

 

That is very strange that they light up while the key in on assy , but go off when you start the car.... Do they also come on when you just put the key to the run position with the engine off or just assy (accessory ) .

Im trying to think of what is energized while in assy that is not energized during engine operation. Obviously there is a wire some were sending power to them that is bypassing the reverse switch... I cant think of anything that would be energized during assy that wouldn't be during engine run. How ever there are things that energize during engine run that don't during assy, turn signals come to mind because I believe the reverse switch gets power from the same fuse as the turn signals. In assy the trun signals should be dead.

When ever I have an electrical problem the first thing I do is start looking for any thing that someone else has tried to rewire , fix or install... Look for black electrical tape that looks out of place or wire splices that don't belong...

 

I'm going to ask you an off the wall question. is your transmission an automatic or manual?

 

5speed... and i think it has something to do with my wires under my steering columm cause the first time it happend to me .... i happened to had my steering columm unasembled and i moved around their and they turned off. so im guessing something around their. idk