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kodanja

kodanja

Obi Wan
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Ok driving home yesterday the woman behind me in the huge SUV. She didnt see me at the stop light and came screaming into my rear view mirror. Luckly I spotted her and pulled forward in the nick of time.

So that got me to thinking about Installing the Thrid brake light, My question is i bought a led third brake light it's 12 volt, it has 2 wires on it. I tryed hooking it directly to the rear brake light connection to realize it wont work when the lights are on the car. do I need to go directly to the brake light switch? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/driving.gif
 
Try reversing the wires and attaching to the brake light connection. LED lights seem to only light one way. To test which wire is ground, touch the connections to your battery.
Hook the ground to ground and the hot in-line with your brake lights in the trunk.

I'm sure some electrical guru can enlighten us (pun intended) as to why leds only work on way. At least mine does.
 
Operative letter is "D"... for diode. Only passes current one direction.
 
The 3rd brake light works fine when the lights are off.

But because the brake light has 2 filiments, when the parking lights are on there is power going thru the wires.
I turn the brake light is cancelled out with the lights on.

does anyone have a schematic of how this unit should be connected?

thanks
 
Just bought a pair of hyper lites for 3rd brake lites and was also wondering how to hook up. If any one has done it, exact perfect hookup instructions would be greatly appreciated.
 
I hooked my led signal and brake lites up as follows
Signals below dash into signal switch wires beside the column. Brake lite into the brake acuator switch at the end of the hydralic Brake slave .
Works dandy!
 
Is the brake actuator switch the white think that actuates when you push the brake pedal in?
 
One wire should be 'hot'..the other 'ground'.

Simply tap the 'hot' wire into the brake lite hot wire.

The other simply gets a lug connector and is grounded to the body.
 
kodanja said:
Ok driving home yesterday the woman behind me in the huge SUV. She didnt see me at the stop light and came screaming into my rear view mirror. Luckly I spotted her and pulled forward in the nick of time.
Click to expand...

There has been times like that in my TR6 where I swear a third brake light wouldn't have made a difference because they still wouldn't have seen it. There have been a few times that I have seriously thought about putting a flag on the car, you know those tall/orange bicycle flags. Instead, I just keep an eye out until traffic behind me has stopped.

I guess getting rear-ended by someone doing 45mph has made me a little paranoid in some situations.

Anyway, thinking about installing a third brake light onto my rollbar myself so I like these threads.
 
I dunno, but I hooked my LED third brake light up by splicing directing into the brake light wire going to the back and used the other to ground to the body. Works for me. The draw on the LED light is measured in milli-amps.
 
Bill i tried it no go. hmmm?

I hooked the hot wire to the red brake light wire and the ground to a ground. still nothing.

The led light will only light up when I step on the brake. having the hot to the red brake light on the bulb, & the ground to the oppisite side green. the problem is when I have the lights on the running light cancels out the led.

any other suggestions?
 
There should not be a red brake light wire. The brake lights are G/P. You only want the LED light bar to light up when the G/P light gets some juice, like when you step on the brake.

Sounds as if you are hooking up to a Red tail light circuit, not the brake light circuit. Totally different wires.
 
heres what I have.

the 2 black wires are for the led

all works fine when lights are in off position
when lights are on, no led

DSC00098.jpg
 
Bill,

I remember reading something a while back about someone else having this problem. I think that there was something about the resistance in the circuit and LED's not working without modifying them. I can't remember for sure, but it was either here or on the 6-Pack electrical.

That's why I did what I did with mine.
 
Nice installation! I hope that you figure it out too.

I'm looking forward to seeing that working at the "British By The Sea" on June 3rd. My wife just mailed in our check and registration.
 
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