The squeal in what I had was caused by a bad installation of an aftermarket stereo, and the brake light issue turned out to be a switch. It is a 2 pole switch and for some reason it was sending a signal to the shift solenoid, but not the lights. weird, to me, but a new switch resolved it. The radio was taken out and factory put back in.

Just thought of something, though. A regular 1157 bulb will not work. I would go to a parts house and get the correct bulb from the counter for your brake lights. Make sure you have the right bulb in there...

 

well discoguy your last post gave me a glimmer of hope. I purchased a new brake light switch hoping it would be a quick fix to my problem but I was wrong. I popped it in and no luck. One thing that's driving me absolutely crazy is the fact that I had just the one brake light above the rear window and it to has decided to stop working. A thought that crossed my mind is when I was removing the audio jack From behind my stereo (due to the whine) could I possibly of pushed something loose at a connection point somewhere behind the dash causing me to lose all brake lights? This issue is slowly becoming something that's above my head!! Any ideas?

 

As I stated before, follow the schematics in the rave manual, start at the bulbs in the brake housing and work your way forward or start at the brake switch and work your way back. I suggest starting at the bulbs because a bad ground back there will save you a lot of time. get under the dash and test the brake switch, make sure it works, then unplug it, this should produce the same effect as if the brakes are applied, then grab a meter and test for voltage at the bulb housing, then (using the schematics) find the connector where the 3 brake lights separate from the main wire. test there for power and if you don't have it move up to the next connector (my guess would be in a kick panel) I would think there will only be about 2 or 3 connectors in line between the switch and the bulbs and the rave manual schematics will show you the pinout diagram, wire colors going in and out, color of plug, location of plug (including a black and white photo of the plug). If you do not understand how to read the schematics let me know and I will try to break down the circuit for you when I have a minute.

PS if you at one point had the single brake light in the back then your problem should be back there because the brake light signal goes to the back of the truck on one wire, then it separates into 3 wires to go to each individual bulb. I am willing to bet that you have bad ground points in the back of the truck, this will be a plug with a bunch of wires in it that does not connect to another plug it just gets bolted to the body. I don't remember for sure if the light assembly is grounded by its own bolts or if they have ground wires on them but this would be what I would check first.