The stock, led third brake light on my '97 was puny. I had replaced the diode to get it going again but some of the bulbs were no longer working and the ones that did work were fairly dim. Rather than try to get more out of the old lights I replaced them with new bulbs which turned out to be cheap, easy and very effective.
To start I ordered 1 unit of these:
www.superbrightleds.com
The pictures below tell the tale but here's the summary for installing the new light strip in place of the old one:
To start I ordered 1 unit of these:
Outdoor Single-Color LED Strip Light - Super Flexible w/ Through Hole LEDs - 12V - Waterproof IP67 - 85 Lumens/ft
SKU: WFLB-R96
Color Options: Red
Price: $22.95
Outdoor Single-Color LED Strip Light - Super Flexible with Through Hole LEDs - 12V - Waterproof IP67 - 1m - Red
This super-flexible, waterproof LED strip light operates on 12 VDC. Using 5-mm through hole LEDs, it emits up to 85 lumens of cool white, warm white, UV (blacklight), blue, green, yellow, orange, or red illumination per foot. The 3.2' side-emitting LED light strip is completely encapsulated in...
Install was pretty straightforward once the 3rd brake light was sitting on the workbench. If you know how to do it the 3rd brake light is easy to remove but there are some tricks to getting it out (beware brittle plastic!) and I'll let other threads on mud cover that for anyone interested. Drop this into Google:remove third brake light fzj80 site:forum.ih8mud.com
The pictures below tell the tale but here's the summary for installing the new light strip in place of the old one:
- Once you have the 3rd light out disassemble it and remove the old led strip / pcb board.
- Take the new led strip and fold it in half then, using super glue/clamps, glue a few spots to help the strip stay folded
- The strip housing seems like a silicone type of rubber so the glue doesn't adhere that great.
- This is just to make it easier to assemble and could be skipped.
- trim one of the set of wires short and leave one full length.
- for the end I cut short I staggered the cut a bit to help reduce risk of a short-out, shrink wrap/etc. could also help with this if you want to take those steps
- insert the folded light strip into the space where the old pcb light had been installed with the bright end of the lights pointed the right direction
- bench test the new light strip if you need to see where the light emits from
- center the lights side-to-side, there's an inch or so of extra space and you'll see that I installed the bulbs flush-left in the pictures below and it's a touch off-center.
- route the new wires through the same channel that the old wires passed through
- snap the red lens back into place, over the new/folded light strip
- cut the socket off of the old pcb/led lights and connect it to the new light strip
- Green was positive and white with black stripe negative on my '97
- re-assemble/install
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