LED Third Brake Light (Homemade)

[Spyke]

I was literally just looking at the Hella LED ones available through Daniel Stern's website. They look much more clean than a DIY job.

[phillye30fanboy]

I like the DIY aspect though, and could use some better electrical skills. So learning how to do this would be good for me. Bumpity bump bump

[Schnitzer318is]

Wow... been a long time since I've checked out this thread. Here is my response to phillye30fanboy if anyone else is interested... this is an easy DIY and looks even better with today's wide angle LED's with uber brightness.

1. cut a circuit board the size of the inside of the housing so it will fit.

2. solder the LED's in strings with or without resistors depending on the ratings of the LEDs. Try to keep the current voltage to about 90% capacity or less. This will give the LEDs a long life. Example: if you have LEDs with a voltage handling of 3 volts, you can string 4 of them together in series for a total handling of 12 volts. The car while running operates between 12 and 13.4 volts so you would need a resistor to dissipate the last 1.4 volts. If you string 5 of them in series you wouldn't need a resistor because they would have a handling of 15 volts. Since the car can't provide that each LED gets (13.4V/5 LEDs) 2.68 volts. This is almost 90% capacity for each LED. They would not light up with 100% brightness but would still be very visible and would last forever.

3. Wire the board you made to the supply wires for the third brake light and voila you are done. As an addition you can jump the resistor on the third brake light circuit board so that the OBC doesn't constantly tell you that your brake lights are out.

Hope that makes sense. I know this isn't a DIY, but if you do some reading you'll be ok with the guidance given. I was a complete noob when I did the mod but now have built complete tail lights and all kinds of cool stuff.

[Gregs///M]

If you guys want a schematic of this, let me know and I can generate it.