I've tried everything with this car... then I thankfully came across volvoforums here and hopefully some of you guys can shed some light.

It's an '04 S60 2.5T
check stop lamp indicator comes on when you press the brake pedal.
The third brake light works fine, it's just the 2 side brake lights.

After some searching on here, seems like it may be a faulty relay or shunt.

I took a pic of my setup of the relays and shunts in the trunk area and it just seems like something is missing or maybe I'm testing the wrong ones.

anyway, here's the pic... am i missing any relays/shunts?
if not, which ones should i be examining?

P.S. - i realize the fuses for the brake lights are 10A, it's because that was the first thing I switched out. Old ones were 7.5A.

thanks to all who can help.

 

This may sound weird but I've seen a car with the bulb message and it had the wrong bulbs installed. The owner got the left bulb by taking the right one out and buying that one, however the left one was wrong so in the end he had two wrong bulbs. I know it sounds stupid but I thought I'd let you know

 

Lamp failure lights can definitely be caused by improper or unmatched lamps.

 

the thing is that the bulbs weren't changed, this just happened all of a sudden. I tested the bulbs and they are not fried.
so confused ---

 

do the cheap stuff first, buy a couple of new matching brake light bulbs and replace them and see if that fixes the problem.

 

just tried this... no luck

 

If it is anything like a 2002, check RMI5 and RSH6.

 

thanks so much, i'm going to go ahead and get those from volvo asap.
this was the first thing i wanted to do so thank you again, especially for labeling the pieces.

 

changed shunt + relay... still no luck. i guess the next step is to trace the wiring from the brake pedal?

 

If it's not those, then wiring is quite likely. I found the '04 diagram and have attached it. Since your 3rd light works, then you can limit your search to the wire between the CEM and REM (The one with the 54/43 next to it) and the wiring after the relay and shunt.

If you have one a voltmeter (or one of those 12v tester lights) check for voltage, with the pedal pressed, at the fuse 11D/14 pin1. Pin 2 should have a ground (some resistance from the bulbs too.) If not, see if you can find that splice (53/667).

Let us know how it goes!

 

thanks so much for everything ikey, you are obviously a true asset to this forum...
now to find someone with enough expertise to work on this....
anybody in Northern NJ (Near NYC) want to help me do this and get paid?

 

thank you everyone for being so helpful.
just wanted to put some closure on this.
turned out to be a wiring issue. got it done a month ago
$160 later and it's fixed.

thanks again to all who contributed.

/close thread

 

so I see this is from 2011 but going thru the same problems. Do you remember where your wiring issue was?? Any help would be amazing.

 

I believe it was between cem and rem as ikey mentioned. Mechanic followed it and figured it out with the help given above.