Electronic Throttle Control Issue -Solved

For the past few weeks I have been having an intermittent ETC light with a momentary loss in power. Searched forums regarding this issue and found nothing really helpful for my situation, mostly just frustrated owners struggling with "can not duplicate" responses from dealer service depts.

I got lucky, twice actually, my wife is very observant, and she happened to be following me a few cars back during one of the episodes. She called me and asked if something was up with my brake lights, she noticed them coming on at unusual times like climbing grades etc. I let the cars go by and we did the whole "on now?" "off now?" thing and the truck would stumble randomly while working the pedal. Parked the truck and the lights were on in park with engine running and pedal released. Worked the switch manually and it was clearly not functioning properly.

Out of curiosity, I disassembled the switch and found that it was made improperly. The contacts were on the wrong side of the flat springs inside the switch on two out of three poles. Its actually three switches in one, two normally closed and one normally open. How this switch worked for as long as it did is a mystery to me, it should have failed in a few months not 7+ years.

Replacement switch was a whopping $17, truck is back to running like it should.

2010 Ram 1500 with 118k miles.


Cliff notes: If your having ETC problem, check brake light switch.

Does a 2011 have this same problem?
For my reference, do you have pics of where this switch is located?

The switch is mounted to the brake pedal under the dash. Up the lever a little bit near the top. The switch travels to the first sensor that goes to ABS or PCM, and the other contact is hardwired to the brake lights. The last sensor is switch 2 which also goes to ABS or PCM.

I don't recall if the 2010's have the switch wired to PCM still, the newer trucks have it wired to ABS.