NoLimitzBuilt

Just two let you know, shaving the third brake light is nt always ilegal. I live in AZ and you only have to legally have one taillight here. I checked on all of this when I was building my mazda. I shaved all the lights on my nissan and only put some little billet lights for a hot rod in it and was legal. So it matters where you live if that is legal or not.

Shoelesscraig

I agree w/ NCBIGGJ. I have heard from several people that it is not illegal in every state to NOT have a 3rd brake light. I live in GA, and it is definitely a requirement here to have the 3rd light, but I have heard from some that other states do not require it. I think all car manufacturers put a 3rd light on all cars anyways though.

R2D2

I've been tryin to find a vehicle that may have the same LED brake light except with all of them lighting up.
For some reason, I keep thinking a older model Lexus (ES/GS maybe from the '90s) had this type of clear light.... Does anybody remember what model & year Lexus it was, and is it possible that it might even fit???
Hm....

Somnambulated

Probably not as a snap-in, but maybe if you cut the lens off it and put the bulb array behind the stock lens.

TCAV8R

Still nothing new with this huh?
Sad no company has catered to our desires.

rolstc

for some odd reason i dont like that ... sorry. And i thought i would. I think it would have been better if you just took on the emblem and made it flush and left the light.

Skeorx13

Anyone have a "How To" thread for doing the night rider tail light idea? Maybe just what setup you need to do differently compared to this one? I lose my patience quickly trying to rummage through 300+ posts.

NeveNelEstate

Where'd you get that price from, I stopped by the local Toyota dealership and they said over $100

etli

Most Toyota dealerships want $100 for the third brake light. Any company who would do this for aftermarket would have to charge about $200 probably to make it worth their time.

Anyone know or why TYC decided to make the tailights for the tc? Maybe we could all petition them for a third brake light too.


I considered cutting the housing so I could get to the guts of the light and maybe shove in some other company's third brake light strip. There are several problems with this.
- I don't know if there's enough clearance inside the light housing to slide LED's into the edges of the light
- There's a lot of "positioning features" on the back of the LED housing
- I would need to glue the housing back together after I'm done and I don't think glue would hold up to the force of the bolts that hold the housing against the car's sheetmetal.

Ed

etli

The LED's on my light have died on one side.

I believe one of the soldering connections came loose or perhaps one the LED's burnt out.

When I strike the light really hard, when the brake light is on, sometimes the LED's will flash on for a second but then they'll just turn right off again.

I don't want to mess with my current setup anymore so I think I'm going to abandon the idea of drilling in from the back....


I talked to TYC the other day to see if they would do our third brake light. They said they don't usually but they would feed it up the chain of command over there. So don't hold your breath.


I think that I will have to come up with a connection system that is MUCH stronger than just soldering stuff together. I also don't have a good sense of how "electrically" robust LED's are. Do they burn out more easily if your voltages are slightly too high or too low?

The next step will be a dissection of the third brake light to see what Toyota is CURRENTLY using.

engifineer

^^ LEDs are pretty stout since they dont produce any real heat to speak of. As long as you keep the forward current in spec you should be ok. If I can get a hold of one out of salvage cheap I may try making one that lights all the way across and blinks the ends along with each blinker... I will see what I can find.

honey0bucket

the only problem i have with this is the lights are not all the same distance apart...

AMMO_tC

need something more creative. however, not bad if they're evenly spaced.

etli

Heh,

It turns out there are other websites that are linking to my thread. :D

ScionSniper suggested that it might be a cold solder joint.... I'm not sure why it would be ok for 6 months and then suddenly go cold... But he tells me sometimes solder joints will do that - where they just suddenly stop working, even though there is electrical contact, no power flows.

Something else to be considered, a car is subject to a lot of bouncing and vibration. Maybe that is what knocked a solder joint loose. I dunno...

We might take a look at it this Friday...

If you can evenly space the LED's that would be nice but there are positioning features in the mold on the back of the lens. You can't drill through to put LED's in certain spots.

etli

OK folks,

I managed to get yet another 3rd brake light from a salvage yard in Rancho Cordova. Thanks to Dave Gille at Steven's Creek Scion.

I'm going to do a complete disection of the the GODDAM@($*(*%*(#*(#*(*#( third brake light. You know, they should just have a fully-lighting third brake light on the RS2 or RS3.

I am basically going to dremmel off the back of the housing from the from the lens. I have no idea at the moment how I'm going to get it re-attached but I'll probably have to use 3M tape or some two-part epoxy.

Once it's off, I'm going to have to take a look at the stock LED's in there and try to figure out what brightness they are. I think they are the 4-pronged high flux LEDs. But they seem to be even BRIGHTER than the 14000 mcd LED's I added. I hope those LED's aren't some sort of "China Only" parts or something.

If I can figure out the brightness, I will then try to get LED's that approximate the brightness or something. I will try to mount them on a Prototyping board or otherwise use a circuit that will keep the chance of burnout to a minimum.

Updates when they occur. AND DEAR GOD, if someone finds out about a REAL company making this for us, tell me right away so I can stop with this stupid obsession of mine.

Ed

magyver

do it right, do it all over w/ your own led's.. ALWAYS use superflux led's the 4 prong.. dont get the cheap ones.. i order from lumiled or future electronics.. ya have to buy in amounts of 60, but they are worth it... i honestly think it looks like ****.. it is uneven and scattered.. should be 100% even.. and all the same led's.. mixing and matching is sorta ghetto.. as well as 5mm led's.. regardless from where you get them.. superflux is the way to go, as you can get a 80% larger viewing angle.. but you say the MCD is lower, yes, but that MCD is from every direction.. not the spot effect a 5mm gives.. i want people to know in the left and right lane that i am braking.. not just the guy behind me... i say different led's and even spacing and you'll be set.. i'll post some picts in the next couple weeks when i do mine..

ganske03

They need to come out with a new third brake light assembly with different color covers such as smoked/clear/red and inside of this they need to have the entire bar light up with LED's. I know they do this for Mustang so I would think it would be coming soon.

etli

Just for my own notes; Trung found this- Thanks Trung!!!!!

http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/DS29.pdf

These are from lumileds and are the exact LED boards in our current third brake light.
Each one costs about $6 by themselves but you have to get a minimum order of 32 units per order.

You might try asking for samples.

These are nice because you know all the LED's are the same, and each assembly is supposedly tested before hand.

A quick note about buying LED's from ebay - I got a batch of 50 from some place in Hong Kong, after trying to solder them up, it doesn't look like the LED's are all the same. Some are brighter than others, some barely light at all. Some are incredibly dim. Perhaps I'm just lousy at soldering. A couple of different techie folk, including Tim (dragonmaster/scionsniper) and Trung (squallhart) gave it a shot but the LED's just wouldn't light up consistently. Bummer.

I'm thinking also that LED solder joints are really weak mechanically. I'm guessing one or two big pot holes will bust wiring loose. It would be better to get an LED strip board that is soldered by machine or crimped onto the board (like the SnapLED that Lumileds make).

I'm going to try (yet another) LED third brake light build using the LumiLED's center stop lamp strip.

SquallLHeart

go ed! with this.. if it works... will be perfect unlike everyone elses!

but for all you knight rider folks.... still keep looking..

magyver

well, before i got the quality led's from lumiled, all my led's were from ebay. and if you know what your doing, as i kinda do, they should all be the same.. i have had 0 duds in the 800+ taht i bought.. so.. yeah.. you'll need 3 or more to fill the tail plus the factory.. and there isnt alot of room in there to play with