Hey guys,
I swapped trunks with a gal (my winged trunk with 3rd brake light integrated) for her (wingless trunk with 3rd brake light in the window). My problem now is that now that i no longer have a wing, I no longer have any 3rd brake light. Now my tail lights are very slightly tinted but super visible even in the sunlight but I'm still worried about people rear ending me since my car is lowered and the taller trucks in the area many not see my brakes lights....

Has anyone ever done a custom 3rd brake light similar to the Bentley Continental before? I think it could look very good or very tacky depending on how it's done. how would i wire this up, connect it, anyway to make this a brake light and a reverse light all in one (since my reverse lights suck too.

Any help would be awesome!

my car



bentley's 3rd brake light

 

IIRC, no 3rd brake light is a ticketable offense?

I'd get SOMETHING in there in the meantime.

Good luck on the Bentley version, someplace like this may know..

http://www.modifystreet.com/Universa...e-Red-LED.html

 

Take her 3rd brake light. Swap out the rear decks. That's what I'd do.

 

Yup. And you'd fail safety inspection.

When my 3rd brake light went bad, i drove around for 6 months without it and definitely felt that at certain times of the day (dusk and dawn) when my parking lights were on, i had people slamming their brakes on and almost rear ending me. Once i fixed the light, i noticed that seemed to stop. Seems people are trained to react on that 3rd light popping on.


If the interiors are the same color and compatible, i'd swap deck lids. Might be a PITA, but it's OEM.

Other than that you coul probably get a rear window spoiler and integrate an LED strip into it somehow.

 

You'll want to be careful selecting an aftermarket 3rd brake light option if you want to use the OEM wires, there's something funky about the voltage iirc. I'd have to find my multimeter to verify again but I'm pretty sure it's a good bit less than 12 volts.

What that means to you is when you decide what you want to install, plan on tapping the brake lights and running new wires at the very least, and preferably run a relay as well to avoid shorts/blown fuses.

Easiest option might be to find a replacement OEM light for the housing that you don't have and building a new housing for it on the deck or try to get lucky in the used marketplace (that's what I ended up doing)

 

I would definitely do this in the mean time. I've never seen the rear brake light up top on a G before. Integrating it into a roof spoiler also sounds interesting. If you end up doing either, be sure to post pics.

 

The fair solution would be what was suggested she doesn't need her 3rd brake light anymore, because retail that OEM 3rd light is like 280 or so off the top of my head....

 

I'm not sure if this is gonna help you or not, but when my factory 3rd brake light stopped working, I bought a 30 foot reel of led's off of amazon for about $20 that was made to work off of 12 volts. I took the factory housing apart and removed the part with the lights and cut a strip of led's to fit inside the housing. It has worked reliably for abut a year and a half. Something else you might try is if you can get a factory 3rd brake light, you could probably cut holes in teh parcel shelf to allow it to mount up like a factory application.

 

There's got to be a few of OEM 3rd brake lights out there. I see people all around IL in Gs that had the spoiler put on as an accessory item rather then on the build sheet from Infiniti/Nissan so they have both the one in the spoiler and in the deck (which looks really silly) Should be able to get one off of them for your blank deck

 

well the only thing is, if it wasn't factory then it leaves a nice size hole there, so most spoiler installers just unplug the wire, that way, if you ever decide to remove the spoiler, you can hook the wire right back up and be back to normal

 

My thrid break light was not working due to a faulty connection.........works fine now and looks great!

 

I have the same issue...but because I (literally) ripped my trunk spoiler off. Hated that thing. But, I bought an LED strip and just haven't hooked it up yet. I'm putting mine in the rear deck tho. If I do it sometime soon, I'll let you know. I probably won't cuz the car's off the road till spring, but I'll HAVE to do it before March/April timeframe. So, we'll see.

 

that bentley solution is rice. alot of trucks do something like that with a long led strip.

 

I cant swap to her oem rear deck lid because she traded in the car a few months back when i did the swap. I've been pulled over once or twice since and no comments yet about not having a 3rd brake light (worst case scenario is I just say that the car came without a spoiler so no 3rd brake light). I'm fairly good with electronics and lighting since i've done WAY too many retrofit headlights and doing GTR style taillights right now so wiring isn't an issue. just trying to figure out how it'd look. I think with some types of leds it'd look super ricey but if you got the right kind it could look good. I might just buy a $10 strip on ebay and test it to see how i like it.