Well this is the history. It is my M-O-L's car so I do not daily drive it, which makes it a little more difficult to know what is going on with it. The passenger side rear marker wire was hanging and dragging on the ground, with a softball size slush ball stuck to it. It is a bad design how the wire for both rear side markers is ran and clipped to the rear bumper cover. At this point the damage was done, the side marker socket is broke off in the harness plug. I will have to purchase a new side marker, the harness is fine. I went through and moved the wire harness to the back side of the metal bumper and cable tied it. It areas (Wisconsin) that get snow, a lot of it gets thrown up by the rear wheels. I plan to make a rear pan/cover, install mud flaps, and make wheel well liners in spring to prevent this.

I was using a rubber mallet and tapping inside the rear bumper cover flexing it to knock out the frozen slush to get to the wiring. There was a lot of slush on the gas filler tube, and Evap/emissions stuff in the back (under spare tire area). I wasn't any were near any of this and don't believe I disturbed it, but it is a change something was affected.

I also recently installed a remote car starter, which has worked great for the last 3 weeks. I've installed a hand full of alarms, and a hand full of remote starters, and am an electrician. My point is I know what I'm doing. On the remote start I have an the #1 aux output tied to two relays. One relay activates the coil of the relay the the headlight switch turns on. And the other relay puts power on the positive wire that goes to the back up lights. This is all good, on thing that happens, but makes sense when this feature is used is that the "R" on the gear select on the dash comes on because it is part of the same circuit as the back up lights. I've remote started the car and turned on the lights many time with out a problem. I had the car started with the key in park and wanted to see if the remote start aux would still work and it does. At this point I noticed that the extra lights were on, on the dash. I don't think they just turned on at that point, I just noticed them when I looked over. I don't see how the remote start would have any thing to do with this in the slightest. Plus as a side note all my connections are soldered, taped with 3M 33+ tape and then a small cable tie so the tape will never come off and it is on the side of the joint that has two wires side by side to also help with strain relief.

I plan to take the car to Advanced Auto to have the codes read. But what I find strange is that all three of these lights are on together. I check the owners manual, and it doesn't tell you much, mostly to drive directly to the dealer. The car runs fine. I did what the manual said as far as the CEL I checked the gas cap, it is good. The car what driven 10 miles turned off, and drove home. All the lights are still on. I also know that the manual says if the VSC light is on that the Trac Off light will also come on.

Any ideas, sorry for the book, but I wanted to cover the bases.

 

My M-O-L went to Advanced Auto and they checked the code. I was not there, so this is second hand. She didn't come home with an actual code. The employee at the store said it was the shift position sensor (for what gear it is in). She said he said something like starting it in park, and shifting to neutral and back to park would clear it, or something like that.

The three (stooges) lights did go off eventually. I determined it was my fault. The car was in park and I wanted to see if the aux channel on the remote start could be activated with the car running. This turns on the headlights and reverse lights, also the "R" shift light. Which was on along with the park "P" light. This might be OK now that I look at the wire diagram, it doesn't show an input for park to the ECM. I don't remember, but I might of had it in drive, that would have done it an confused it.

So I doubt anyone else will have the problem I had. But what is good to know is that the shift position sensor (switch) can fail and this will cause this to happen.