ok...got in the 82 chevy yesterday and took off down the road...i put the right turn signal on and then pushed the brakes to slow down for the turn...whenever the brake pedal was pushed the turn signal would no longer flash, if i let off the brakes, it would flash again, until the brakes were applied again...the left turn signal doesn't stop, but it slows down when the brakes are applied...the turn signals work fine when the brakes are applied...also i noticed tonight that my tail lights did not light up with the lights on...could this be a problem with the head light switch? or the brake switch? could these problems be related??

lol...pull the rear wire harness and fix your rotted wires lol....i've had the same problem all winter long....repairing it in snow and salt leads to repairing all over again....and again....do it right once and you should be good for awhile...it's not as hard as it sounds...just trace back on the truck harness to where the wires are good and solid and run new wires to the light assemblies...thats what i did

bad ground or a short, go over the rear wiring harness

Don't even putz with it, just buy yourself a coil of black wire in Wal-mart for $3, connect it to a ground under the dash, run it to the back in a protected location, connect to the left taillight ground, run it to the right, connect it to that ground. Jumper it into the backup light grounds, too.

Mine for a while you hit the brakes with the running lights on, the left taillight just went out completely. When it was time to fix the backup lights for inspection, I jammed ground wires into the edges of the sockets (I have replacement taillights and a complete wire harness for the back).

Chances are it is a wiring issue as noted abover, but keep in mind that the turn signals and brake lights both run through the turn signal switch.

I would place my bets on the turn signal switch ,but I don't think it can effect tail lighting just turn/stop, hmmm

Here again if there's no ground and you add a different draw to the circuit it will cause lights to go out.

Before doing anything, you can take the taillights apart, put some temporary jumpers to ground on, and see if everything works then.

And also, don't forget that there may be more than one problem (sounds like the case to me)... For example the turn signals and brake lights could be malfunctioning because of a faulty turn signal switch and the tailights have a wiring or ground issue. But yeah, start at the back and work your way forward checking wiring.