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1994 CHEVROLET SONOMA — Complaint #260486

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NHTSA Complaint about EXTERIOR LIGHTING:BACK UP LIGHTS:SWITCH filed December 12, 2000

NHTSA complaint #260486 (ODI reference 876353) concerns a 1994 CHEVROLET SONOMA and was filed on December 12, 2000. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 1, 1998. The report was geocoded to Arkansas based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as exterior lighting:back up lights:switch, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.

The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.

Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same CHEVROLET SONOMA cohort independently describe similar exterior lighting:back up lights:switch failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 1994 CHEVROLET SONOMA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
1994 CHEVROLET SONOMA
Component
EXTERIOR LIGHTING:BACK UP LIGHTS:SWITCH
State
Arkansas

Complaint Description

WINDSHIELD WIPERS WILL STOP AT ANY GIVEN TIME. IF CONSUMER JIGGLES CIRCUIT BOARD THEY WILL COME BACK ON. BUT, PROBLEM IS INTERMITTENT. *AK THE WIPER MOTOR WAS REPLACED TWICE AND ELECTRICAL CONNECTIONS WERE REPLACED BUT THE PROBLEM WAS NOT SOLVED. JIGGLING THE CIRCUIT BOARD IS THE ONLY SOLUTION SO FAR. ALSO BACK UP LIGHT SWITCH FAILED AND WAS REPLACED FOUR TIMES BUT GOES OUT WITHINTWO WEEKS EACH TIME. *YH

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 260486
ODI Number 876353
Date Filed December 12, 2000
Failure Date January 1, 1998
VIN 1GTCS1946R8

Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.