Toyota Yaris Back Light Bulb Issues Fix

Toyota Yaris, a great car, very reliable. However, they do suffer from a few niggling problems. One being the back light bulbs. Sometimes they blow, or just stop working for no apparent reason. This is a problem I have had with my own Toyota Yaris. For some reason the back drivers side brake light would not work. First it worked when given a little knock from the outside.

But then after taking the bulb out in order to see which replacement I needed to buy, and then putting it back in until I bought a new bulb, it just wouldn't work at all. Faulty connection somewhere maybe? All the wiring seemed fine. The new bulb came, a 380W Capless. Great I thought. Fitted the new bulb, but still it was a total no go. No back brake light at all on the drivers side.

So I tried the other brand new bulb just in case one was faulty. Still no good. Surely you can't get two brand new brake bulbs that are both faulty. Well I'm sure it's possible but the odds of that have got to be pretty high. Due to the brake light not working properly before fitting any new bulbs, in my opinion it had to be the car. Here's what fixed it for me.

In the book that mechanics look at when checking what car takes what part, like what oil is used in a Yaris etc, it says that my particular model of Toyota Yaris, a 1.3 VVTi SR takes a 380W Capless brake bulb. I'd already tried those bulbs and they didn't work. So instead I bought a 580 12V 5W capless bulb and guess what. It worked straight away. Not sure why. This is just a post in case you are experiencing the same brake light problems and have tried everything else to no avail. You may want to try a 580 bulb and see if that fixes the problem. It did for me.