my entire light went dead, no joke, dealer wanted $438 to replace. they wanted $280 just for the part. i just hung up.

Pulled it out thru the trunk, ended up drilling the holes, took about 20 minutes.

went to autozone, bought some 8in led strips for $15.99. Glued them to the plastic backpiece, put back in, and we are done. Total time 1hr with trip to store.

Who knows how long they'll last, but at least i can get the car passed inspection.

Oh, they wanted $29 to replace the side marker light. I just cant stand them.

 

After much experimenting with lamp connector, checking solder joints, resistors/diode function, etc., I can now endorse a permanent fix for this problem affecting many 03-05 sedans. I enjoy reading all the previous entries that may have fixed the lamp, but until you replace the lamp "board", you may/probably will get a recurrance. LEDmarkers.com has a change-out that puts the baby to bed. Just send them your lamp board with (connector pig tail) and in a week, you get back a cure. Best $60 I've spent in a while. Many thanks, Chris.

 

Thanks for the kind feedback . Glad we could help you avoid the high dealer prices and have a permanent fix .

 

I have to add my thanks to Chris at LEDMarkers.com for an inexpensive and easy fix to this common issue. Have you started to notice that like half of the Gs you see on the road have this problem? Shame on Nissan for not taking care of it properly.

This was the second time in a year that mine went out. I have taken the back seats out several times chasing down an annoying creak (which I never found) and knew that I did not want to go through that process again. So I drilled a 1/4" hole as suggested in this thread and had the light out in 10 minutes. Sent it to Chris, turnaround time was great, and it went back in in literally 3 minutes. Could not have been simpler. Thanks to Chris and this forum I saved myself much time and money.

 

I dropped down the trunk deck cover inside trunk by pulling out about 10 of the pop out clips. No need to fully remove it, the fastenings at the front of it aren't accessible. I pulled out the insulation covering it, removed drivers side screw, drilled a 3/8" hole through two sheets to access and remove passenger side screw (& lost it), unplugged the connector, worked the light forward, pushed the plastic deck up/in to free space to pull the light out, slid the light rearwards and out. I hooked up the light to a battery to test and it worked fine! Put it all back together. Moral of the story: before attacking the screws, drilling and pulling the light out, try disconnecting and reconnecting first, it might be all that's needed. A dab of dielectric grease wouldn't hurt either.

 

Ya, 2 of my lights in the sedan went out this past year. I finally got tired of it and tried to 'fix it.' Before drilling any holes I decided to fiddle around with it a bit. I left the car on and used a foldable chair to press on the brakes. One of the LED is completely off, another one was really dim. I took out only 6 clips to lower the top cover, peeled back a part of the insulation to try to 'feel' where the LEDs are. I stuck my fingers in there to feel the electric board and wiring back there figuring getting shocked by 12V wouldn't be too bad since I am a bit bored anyways. After 10 minutes of pushing and tugging a bit both of the dead/half dead LEDs are now in perfect working order.

I am not saying it'll work for everyone, but before start doing major work on the car maybe just check for loose connection and the problem might be solved. Many electrical components are not soldered properly to handle repeated vibration from daily use. They fail over time but the LEDs are rated for 100,000hrs so I doubt any of us really 'burn out' these LEDs. Most likely some loose connection just needing re-soldering. The GT-R instrument panel back-lighting suffers similar issue.

 

I went to pep boys and bought 20" of alpena diamondlite Red leds.... They have 3M tape on the back and it haves 2 rows of leds on it( wide like the led metal board we have on our 3rd brake)....i just removed the old leds from the metal board and use the board to stick the new stripe of leds on in to fit perfect into the housing....cut it to fit the lenght of the board and thats it...tomorow i need to remove the back seats and set it to its place..probably 2 hours of work with everything ...Hope this helps! Good luck!

 

I just changed out the 3rd brake light on an infiniti g35 2003 four door sedan. After searching the internet and youtube for instructions on how to replace the brake light, this forum with ssmolkin's suggestion was the best option for me. The dealership wanted $398 to replace the assembly and after taxes it would be 400 something. I bought a brake light assembly for $96 through amazon and waited until this weekend to work on it as I knew it would take me awhile since I never did something like this before. Guessing what part of the sheet metal to make the hole was the trickiest part as you have to feel for the screw to guess where to drill the hole. First use a small drill bit to get the hole. It makes it easier so that when you use a 1/2 in. drill bit, the bit won't be sliding all over the surface. There's 2 sheet metal pieces to go through. It doesn't look pretty having the big hole drilled but you don't see it anyway when you open the trunk hood.

At first I tried to see if a hand screwdriver would work, but the metal framing in the trunk made the angle difficult to take out the screw by hand. That is why the holes needed to be drilled. Everything else that ssmolkin wrote was right on. It took me about 2 hours to do. Most of that time was for the drilling so that I could fit the screwdriver correctly. One more thing, I had to lay inside the trunk to do the drilling. Space is limited in that small trunk. You might want to wear some protective eye wear in case pieces of metal shavings come down while you're drilling. After I finished, i plugged the connector back and hit the brakes and nice to know that the new brake light worked. It was definitely worth it fixing it myself and saved me like $300. Good luck to everyone who decides to go the DIY route.

 

My sedan spoiler LEDs are not working and to top it off now they're loose in there and rattle a lot. Has any of you replace the spoiler led strip?

 

I took my car in for an inspection the other day and everything passed except the 3rd brake light. I expected for it to be pricey but got upset when they quoted $660.00 for a little 5" lamp! I just couldn't believe it. I know that people that have money often get over-charged but this was comparable to a lawyer keeping you talking as long as they can at $400 an hour. It was a blatant, "How about we just screw you up the &%# while you watch?" scenario. To add insult to injury, they never even checked the fuse box to see if maybe a fuse had blown. I had to request that. The cynical side of me believes that that might have been intentional but of course we can never prove it.

After I made them check the fuse and they put a voltage meter at the light to see if it was getting juice, we did determine that in fact the full light was bad. My wife searched around online and found it for around $100.

I was a bit discouraged upon reading that I'd have to take out the whole back seat and that it was quite involved but like some others, encouraged when I stumbled across ssmolkin's post about the possibility of replacing it from the trunk. After climbing in the trunk and assessing what I was working with, I couldn't wait to get started. Here are some things I did that maybe can help someone else and provide a few extra tips:

1. When you get the first screw out, I found it helpful to swivel the light to the side. This enabled me to see the work area of the second screw a lot better.

2. I'm 6,1" and but because I'm thin, I was able to put my whole torso in the trunk with my legs hanging out. This helped put me in a position that was much more comfortable to work in and I could see the work area more clearly and for longer periods of time. Just find a small towel or something to prop your head or your neck will get sore real fast.

3. The insulation was not only over top of the second screw but on mine it was glued to it so you have to pull it completely off or you won't be able to either see the screw or get the screwdriver inserted. Watch when you put your fingers up in there as the hole that you just drilled will likely have sharp edges. I filed a couple of them down first.

4. I think it was already mentioned to wear goggles when you're drilling so the shavings don't go in your eyes and of course I did that. What I didn't think about was how hot those shavings were. They were burning my skin as they were falling so I recommend either wearing a long sleeve shirt while drilling or finding a way to cover your arms somehow.

5. There's a 6 or 7" pre-drilled hole that's for a speaker (if you ever wanted to add one). I pushed the insulation plug to the side and put my left hand up in there. It gave me more room to work when I was putting the screwdriver in the hole I drilled and trying to line it up with the screw.

6. While you can do all this yourself, my wife was standing by holding the light and checking the angle of my drill to ensure it was straight, etc. Her help saved me some time and trouble.

I was able to replace the light in about an hour. If my time is worth $100 an hour, I just saved myself $460 by doing this myself.

I feel indebted to those that took the time to post before me. Thanks ssmolkin and everyone else that offered their experience and their advice. Hopefully my few extra tips will make it even that much easier for the next guy.

 

Good instructions from all, thanks!

 

I have an 2004 Sedan 6MT Base, so I don't have reclining rear seats or Bose audio. I was recently doing body work and was inside my trunk. Where the Bose sub would be there is just a whole with insulation. You may be able to access the light through there. I need to change mine too. Sometimes disconnecting the light wiring and connecting it back a few times will make it work, but I think mines completely out. So if you have a base sedan you may be able to go through trunk but otherwise you may have to do take the seat out and all of that

 

so mine isn't working at all, could it be a fuse? If so, where is the fuse located? Thanks