My 1998 SSE has had the Lamp Monitor "Tail Lamp" on (and sometimes off) for the last 3 months. A lamp was burned out when it originally came on. I replaced it. But after that the Lamp monitor "tail lamp" indicator as been on most of the time. The dealer said the sensor is "very sensitive". All the lamps on burning, so I guess I have to live with it until one burns out or ?
I placed a piece of electrical tape over the plastic so I can't see the yellow Lamp Monitor "warning". That helps


Thanks,

Kentlamp

Kent, Wa

You could try taking out the bulbs and cleaning the sockets. That might just fix it.

Also check that you have the correct number of bulb at each location back there; a lower-wattage bulb may draw so little power that the Adaptive Lamp Monitor Unit thinks it'* burned out. You can check out http://www.sylvania.com/auto/carapp/ for a handy lookup listing of bulb specs for your car.

Also don't forget your license-plate lamp(*) and rear side marker bulbs. The rear side markers are snuggled into the extreme outer corners of the red lenses and may be easy to miss.

Finally, turn on your taillights, then have an assistant step on the brake. Any brake lights that go out instead of getting brighter have a bad ground connection at that socket. (Under those conditions, one circuit is using the other for grounding, so when both Tail and Brake circuits are hot, the bulb in the problem socket goes out instead.)

Many members have been burned by this by simply overlooking the license lights. That '* my bet. Your dealer spoke of this being VERY sensitive......but I'd have to say that'* not true. We have relatively few problems with this that can't be explained by a bad bulb or moisture (or the wrong bulb). Most of the time, the only other cause is corrosion in the socket.

The system measures if a bulb is there or not by resistance, so anything like corrosion, bad bulb etc like mentioned above, can cause a false reading. Maybe a few different bulbs combined could make it messed up.

LED tailights will setoff the SSE lamp monitor for instance. Some members got around this with resistors a while ago.

Willwren wrote about the license lights. That never occured to me.
Well one was out so I replaced it and the Lamp Monitor indicator was out.
Interesting the dealer did not consider that. I guess that is why I visit here.
Thanks a lot for the tip. I really enjoy driving my 1998 Bonneville. The 12 way seats are a bonus for my back (and the generous head room).
That makes it easier to work through some of the mechanical problems I have had.
My dad went to General Motors institue back in the 1930'* and gave me his lab jacket'* patch "Pontiac Engineering".

Thanks again,

Kentlamp