I read the third brake light post on this forum, looked it, and started doing some research on converting my own. There was a post on another website where they took the OEM LED third brake light from a 2000-2007 Impala/ Monte Carlo and put it in their housing, that post involved inserting the led strip in a 3rd brake light that was mounted in a trunk lid but the principle was the same.

So I got on ebay and found a used one for about $20.00. Pulled my third brake light out, clipped the two wires that attached the connector and got rid of the incandescent bulb string. The hardest part was getting the lens off without breaking it, it was bonded pretty well to the housing. I took the Impala brake light apart and the LED strip fit just about perfectly in the housing. A little glue at both the ends and I glued the lens back on. Then just connected the wires black to black (-), the brownish-red to red (+).





Put it back on and it worked….sort of. The lights were to dim to really be seen out through the tinted rear window, plus I got that infamous led low glow.



If you read the post on this forum the guys that did this already went to superbrightleds.com and bought the light bar there. After using the LED light strip from the Impala and can tell you that’s the way to go.

So I ordered a red LED rigid light bar from superbrightleds.com, I cut it in half and bought some elbows from the local hardware store, painted them chrome (you don’t need to do that they really didn’t come out like I thought, pretty much looked the same). Then mounted everything in the housing, this time I had to cut some of the side of the third tail light housing away to fit the connectors/ pass the wires on the LED light bar out of the housing. I ran some wire through the rear door (getting the rubber hose that connects the wires from the gate to body back on was a pain) and connected a load resistor by the rear tail lights. Ran the wires back up and to the original connector. This time they are nice and bright and no glow. I think it works well with the IPCW LED tail lights.



















Sorry if the pictures are small, I swear I spent more time trying to upload and properly size these pictures than the whole light conversion took.

 

Heard some of the stories about the cruise control not working after this conversion. Have you tried your's yet?

 

With the 1st light and no resistor it didn't work. The resistor seems to have fixed it because it works fine.

 

To be clear; your Cruise Control does work?

What spec resistor? How do you figure what resistance is needed?

When Whopper gets the time, I'll bet he's on fixing the pics.

 

Yes, my cruise control works. I drove with it today just to be sure it still is working. I don't use the cruise control much, if at all, because I mostly use the car in town. I used a 50 watt, 6 ohm resistor. I went with that size because that's what is used for most of the switchback installs I read about out there. I used the same ones on my front turn signal switchbacks.

 

Expanded the image sizes for ya.

 

Thank you.

 

I just replaced the bulbs with LED's, no conversion to a bar. Will adding a resistor bring my cruise back?

 

If your getting a glow from the LED's, in my experience, adding a resistor would get your cruise control back. I can't remember the exact reason but something about how little power LED lights need to draw messes with the cruise control, so adding the resistor gets everything back. At least it worked with me.

 

Turns out the cruise control problem is just lack of termination of a digital signal line, a 1500 ohm 1/2 watt resistor stuffed in the socket along with one of the bulbs will solve the problem and doesn't draw any more current really.


BTW, I used some superbrightleds 19 LED 921 replacement bulbs in the factory sockets and I think it turned out really well. Next to a normal bulb, they were practically the same brightness, only a more consistent RED. The bulbs didn't like the sockets at first though, I had to bend the leads out away from the center part of the bulb base.