Monday, June 15, 2009

A Light Detour, part 1

A light detour.

One if the advances we've had in the past 30 years is how much better car lighting works. The brightness of halogens, xeon hi-intensity discharge, LED taillamps, all of these work way better than the stupid bulbs and lenses placed on cars 30 years ago.

And the Alfa is even worse than most cars from 30 years ago -- specifically, when it comes to the rear stop lights.

Yep, the rear stop lights are very weak - almost hard to see them turn on during sunny days. As I drive I notice folks seemingly oblivious to the fact that I am on the brakes and slowing down in front of them, and then reacting in half panic as they realize they are about to rear-end me. It's happened a few times, and after being rear-ended in my daily driver recently (another story), I really don't want to go through that again.

So, I figure helping others know when I'm slowing down will, in the end, help me. So I decided to install a third, high-mount brake light. And the best time to do it is while the carpet and the interior is all removed, since it will allow me to run any required wires under the carpet pretty easily.

Finding high-mount brake lights seems harder than it should - I could not find anything useful in any of the usual auto parts stores. However, I did find an online vendor of Hella LED brake lights (Daniel Stern Lighting.) After trading a few e-mails with Mr. Stern, I decided to order the Hella Model 37 LED Brake Light Kit. The parts got delivered in a very timely manner (back in January 2009.)

And there the kit sat, until now.

The brake light kit looks very easy to install - it uses dual-sided, very sticky tape to paste the unit onto the rear glass window. Connection to the wiring is done with these little adapters that are included in the kit.

The hard part is finding the actual brake light wire, carrying the voltage/signal to the rear lights.

It turns out the brake light cable is conveniently colored Red (get it?), coming from the 10-pin harness connector from under the dashboard. Connecting to this wire was very simply accomplished using the aforementioned adapter (again, included with the kit.)

Once I figured out all the wiring, well, I did not install the light. Why? Well, I decided to remove the rear radio speakers. To do this, I had to remove the rear deck/tray. Hmm... should I do that? Well, the deck looks old, and the vinyl looks like it could use a refreshing. So, I went ahead and removed the whole rear tray.

Hence breaking the first rule of car fixing - do not start a new project until you are done with your current project!

So now, I am stuck - I need to get some vinyl, paperboard, cut things, paste things, and replace things. Hmm... Just when I thought I'd be done with stuff soon...

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