Brake Light Mod

3/13/2009

This tutorial shows you how to make the entire taillight into a combined brake, parking, and turn light.

You have to buy two extra brake lights, because they are dual filament bulbs. The ones currently in the outside spot are just 1 filament bulb, and won't serve a dual purpose. You will need to have the 98/99 taillights that have the red/red housing.

Cut off and sand down the two smaller guides, leaving the largest one intact:

The blinker bulb housing will have 2 pigtails, and the brake light housing will have 3 pigtails, so it can run both filaments: Brake/Turn (major), parking (minor), and ground are the leads.

After both are ground down, use a little silicone to secure the sockets into the housing. Be sure that you put a new bulb in the sockets, so you don't have to worry about replacing them anytime soon.

Now, open up the trunk and remove the plastic piece surrounding the trunk latch.

pull back the carpeting, exposing the three bolts that hold on the taillight.

After removing the taillight housing, cut off both leads to the turn bulb, and the major and minor leads to the parking/brake bulb. Using the extra dual filament socket, spilce the wires like so:

Now you can plug the harnesses into the taillight and put the new taillights in. Go ahead and check your wiring by turning on the parking lights and using the turn signals. Don't bother trying the brakes - they won't work until after we work inside the column.

Now, the fun part. First, remove the ignition cylinder but putting the key in and turning to the "run" position, then sticking a pin into the small hole under the column and pulling the cylinder straight out. Next, remove the plastic trim pieces around the column. Using a torx driver, pull out the multi-function switch (MFS), and disconnect the two harnesses.

Run a wire through the column up to the MFS, and jumper it to pin 9 on the MFS (see diagram).

Use a 0.167" female spade connector. Now, splice the other end of the wire into the brake on-off (BOO) switch lead. Now you can put everything back together and enjoy your mod! Both the inner and outer lights will now act as parking, brake, and turn lights.

Thanks to Daniel and Paul, the originator of this mod for the GIII. I like it - it gets idiots off your six in a hurry.

U.L.

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