Your high mounted stop is wired in parallel with the left rear combo-lamp brake light. If you're looking good down below, it is probably worth having a look at what's happening in the cable through the junction of hatch and vehicle.

Like all troubleshooting - divide and conquer. On which side of the wiring is the problem? Let's try to find out.

It's actually not hard to reveal the connector there with a bit of fairly easy trim removal. In fact, the entire 'wing' and light assembly isn't hard to remove if it ever comes down to that.

Having revealed the inline connector, you can check for +12V across the harness side of the connector when the brakes are used. If the 12V is missing, could be a harness issue further upstream. If it's there, then there's an issue with the LED strip.

But .. and we always have to ask .. do you have a 3rd party hitch wired into your system? If so, where did they make the connection? Where they should have - at the hitch connectors provided by Kia - or was there a splicing job going on?

 

ecanderson.

Thanks for the troubleshooting tips. Due to other "honeydo" tasks, I haven't ventured into the troubleshooting just yet. However, with the info regarding the path of the cable for center brake light, you've given me some food for thought.

The vehicle was involved in a accident about four years ago. The rear left was damaged and professionally repaired. Part of the repair included a new light assembly. Over the last four years I've replaced the stop lamp 3‐4 times on the left rear, not once on the right rear. Beginning to wonder if there was cable damage that went unnoticed during the repair.

I'll remove the light assembly and visually inspect the cable to see if there are any naked or cut lines. Hopefully I'll see something or I'll have break out the multimeter.