[patrickt]

It should not be this hard. If you just put the relay on the kitchen table, attach 1157 bulbs to both of the output wires and the negative post of the battery, then feed 12v positive to the middle input wire (brake lights), the bulbs will light, unless the relay is bad. There is no tricky back feeding involved from the turn signals, no nothing -- you don't even have to hook them up. It's that simple for the first leg of the test -- you just leave the turn signal inputs alone, don't even hook them up.