No rear turn signals or brake lights?

[Buickboat]

Hi all, first time posting here. Recently, I acquired a 66 olds toronado, and I had everything ready to go for driving (except for the headlights). So, I take it out for a spin, and I come back, do the old check-see-if-everything-is-still-working, and no brake lights, OR rear turn signals! If I plug a test light into the wires that feed the juice for brake/signal (test light grounded to the car body) The test light shows light when I depress the brake pedal, and when I turn the signals, it flashes just like the lights SHOULD. The most recent thing I did to the car was put in a new heater core. Prior to that, I had been having some trouble with the turn signal switch, it seems to be bad, but I could not get the @#$% thing out of there to replace it, so I just sprayed some liquid wrench in were I could, and it seemed to clear things up, I had signals the whole nine yards. What could it be for them to both go out? <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> Thanks for all your help!

[Buickboat]

I forgot to mention, it makes no difference with parking lights on or off. I also have the tilt/telescoping steering column with directional lights.

-Andrew

[rocketraider]

You're the 2nd first series Toro owner who has had this problem recently.

Since you've got juice at the sockets, the only thing I can come up with is bad bulbs or wrong bulbs. 1157 (double filament/double contact bulbs) should work fine.

You may be losing ground at the sockets. Those no-good GM taillight sockets from the 60s were notorious for doing stuff like this, though it's been a while since I heard of all going out at once. They can drive you nuts sometimes.

If all else fails, get later-style replacement sockets that have a ground wire in addition to the stop and taillight leads. Install them, put a ring terminal on the ground lead and then screw it to the car body. That should eliminate any grounding issues.

Good luck!