944 Cowl 3rd Brake, Anyone using this fixture? Options

[Spoke]

A 914/944 owner asked if I could add LEDs to the 944 cowl 3rd brake fixture. He said this same fixture is also used on some Corvettes. Anyone use this on their 914?





For such a nice exterior, the bulbs are crappy push-in bulbs with even worse sockets. As always, I'm looking for a way to connect wires to this fixture w/o cutting, gluing, splicing. I could solder steel piano wire to the pigtails and plug in to the existing sockets but Steve doesn't think that will work well. There's 2 grommets to this fixture, one to the sealed lens and one to seal through the cowl.




There's almost enough room to get a 5mm LED on a board between the reflector and lens. You can see the edge of the reflector is curved. The LEDs don't fit at the top and bottom so the boards will have a cutout there for relief and for securing the boards.

The length is 11 inches so I'll make the board span the entire interior of the lens. I'm thinking 36 LEDs which will be quite bright.

[Spoke]

@Steve

Steve,
Getting closer to finishing your LEDs. Should have them ready for you in a week or so. Still working on the clips.

These LEDs will be 2x as bright as the bulbs. Each bulb that was in the fixture I was sent burns over 8W for a total just less than 35W. Both LED boards burn a total of less than 3W.

[Spoke]

@Steve

Steve,
Getting closer to finishing your LEDs. Should have them ready for you in a week or so. Still working on the clips.

These LEDs will be 2x as bright as the bulbs. Each bulb that was in the fixture I was sent burns over 8W for a total just less than 35W. Both LED boards burn a total of less than 3W.

@Steve

Well it's been a bit more than a week but the 3rd brake lights will ship this weekend.

Took a while to figure out how to connect the LEDs to the original bulb sockets. The bulbs have straight pins and doesn't really have a base so I just soldered 25Ga piano wire to push into the bulb sockets.

The clips went through several iterations and now fit will with the boards.




Here's the boards connected into the bulb sockets. Either socket could be used for connection. I'm not sure if the top hole is 12V or ground. You'll have to figure that on out.