For around 6 months I’d been thinking about fitting a 3rd “middle” brake light to my Griff which thought would be fairly straight forward and would improve safety and signalling to other drivers (especially at night) when braking or indeed stopped: such as on the M6 after hitting a jam…!
The first problem was where to place the brake light and then, finding a suitable unit…
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I considered at first making some kind of mounting bracket at the bottom of the rear screen, but then with the roof down the light would be obscured unless high enough which would then be in the way when looking through the rear-view mirror, and probably look crap… After some investigation I decided the best place was to mount light at the top of the window, onto the fibreglass frame supporting the rear section of roof. This way wouldn’t need to make a bracket and would be higher and more visible… Unfortunately in this position it wouldn’t be seen with the roof fully down, but as 80% of the time I drive the car with the roof up, or in targa mode I figured this was the best option keeping things simple, and in any case I personally think it’s at night or in poor weather that a 3rd brake light is most useful… Next came the search for a suitable brake light unit… after looking around local car accessory shops and trawling the internet I decided on a Hella Thinlite (HEL106-227) LED light unit, which has 10 bright LEDs, is fairly thin (around 1cm), reasonable width and height (around 28cm wide x 3 cm high), and available in a smoked effect finish, which I thought would go well with the starmist grey of my exterior paint, and grey leather interior: Grey, grey, and more grey :-) The Hella unit has adhesive backing, but thinking about how hot it can get in the summer inside the car I figured best to screw it to the fibreglass frame to make it secure… and here the fun started! Never having tried to screw anything into fibreglass before I was quite surprised how hard it is! I guess that will be the resin… I found in the end making a small pilot hole with hammer and nail made it easiest to put in the screws (small drill would have been even better, but not enough room!). Getting into a position to make the hole and put the screws in was a challenge, best position was lying with back on the transmission tunnel and feet on passenger seat (after taking my shoes off!), but this was quite uncomfortable after a while…
Next problem was how to route the cable down to the access point behind the passenger seat… At first I tried going through the frame in the same way as the overhead light, but after many attempts found this was too tight. I then tried using some adhesive clips to hold the cable against the frame round to the access point, but didn’t work very well, so finally found best solution was to nail in some small 5.0mm round black clips around 8cm apart, and then route the cable through the tube used for the interior light cable into the access point.
| | | See pictures of the light in position, and the nail clips to hold the cable in position round to the cable access point… |
| Attaching the LED light into the brake circuit was fairly straight forward once confirmed that the brake cable colours matched those described in Steve Heaths Bible, using Snap-Lock automotive cable connectors to tap into the circuit, connected the red positive connection of the LED light to the Purple/Green cable and Yellow to Black Earth as shown in the picture to the right .
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The final result? See below… It certainly is bright when on, and smoked clear plastic blends in fairly well…
What would do differently if did it again:
- Used a cloth between hammer / tools and rear screen to avoid scratching it…
- Used a cushion to avoid getting a sore back when working in awkward position…
- Fitted the 3rd brake light to a roll bar if had one…
Parts used:
- Hella Thinlite 12V third brake light ,(SMOKE GLASS/SELF ADHESIVE option) HEL106-227
- 8 x Round black 5.0mm nail clips
- 2 x Snap-Lock automotive cable connectors
If need any more info, or got any better suggestions / improvement let me know…
Stefan. ( msg ) |
