Open up the bulb failure sensor, it's the red can in the fuse box. You'll
find cracked solder joints on the circuit boards inside it. Reflow those
with some fresh solder and plug it back in, should be good to go.

I pulled the red can and opened it up.  Could find no breaks on the circuit
board, but there was a bit of corrosion.  leaned it up, but didn't help, so
I jumped from the brake light switch to the brake light assembly.  It got
the lights working.  Now the strange part.  When I removed the temporary
jumper to run it "properly", the lights began to work normally.  But then
they crumped again.  So I  made the jumper semi-permanent, until I can get
to a junk yard.

Damn.  The car only 400k miles and it's already falling apart.

J Corey
'86 740
400K miles  --  all mine!