Third brake light...

G

Georgio

Active member
 Hockley, Essex
...thought some toe rag had tried to lever out my third brake light as it was split in two with one end snapped off lying on the floor. Then I google it and find out that this unit is almost designed to fail, a bit like the springs/fog lights then.
Anyways, going to have a punt at repairing/modifying it myself as I don't fancy the stealers price for a new unit which is ultimately going to fail again.... :thumbsup:
 
Good luck with that, I changed mine last week for the same reason, £51.

When I took the old one out it just fell apart.
 
Looking at the design of the thing it's going to fail because key areas like the middle section are cut in making a natural stress area. Luckily my lense is only in three bits and separate from the LED body, so I'm going to firstly reinforce behind the front lens with clear material, then seal it up properly, then look at reinforcing the mounting to stop it cracking when the boot lid is shut with gusto. Two pack plastic epoxy/clear duck tape will be my tools of choice, so we'll see how it goes... :roll:

andysat said:
How are you going to modify it?
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All glued up so now the wait.
Decided against ducktape in the end as it has a pattern which will affect the lense so I just reinforced the inside of the lense with sellotape very carefully rubbed down to fit all the ridges and hollows.
When I took the LED housing out, the nuts were well tight. When I put the housing back tomorrow I'm going to fit Adhesive sponge pads along the bottom of the housing to provide some padding. Hopefully these along with finger-tight nuts should solve the problem.
We shall see... :roll:
 
Ok three quick images uploaded which are pretty self explanatory. Basically the lense is designed to fail, especially as the bottom of the assembly is not supported and will flex when shutting the boot or hitting potholes.

osvp.jpg

cnjc.jpg

bi19.jpg
 
Good job. Seems BMW have always had design flaws in their third brake lights. My E88 had a service recall for it. Needless to say I wasn't aware of it until this happened.





Now I always make a point of checking for any cracks, water ingression etc as driving to the garage with blue tape all over the back doesn't look great
 
That's exactly what my light looked like except mine was in bits on the floor. Took me 5 minutes to remove, 10 minutes to carefully glue and tape, so time well spent especially as it won't happen again... :roll:

Angie4m said:
Good job. Seems BMW have always had design flaws in their third brake lights. My E88 had a service recall for it. Needless to say I wasn't aware of it until this happened.
Now I always make a point of checking for any cracks, water ingression etc as driving to the garage with blue tape all over the back doesn't look great
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Yep if you look at the photo you'll see that they crack in the middle exactly where there is a v section cut into the material. This v is a bit odd as it doesn't serve any function except to make the lense weaker than it needs to be.
Andy, if I were you, repair your existing red one and keep looking for a white one, but when you get the new one if you do nothing else, glue the tabs and reinforce across the v section with some strips of sellotape. This should make the light fit for purpose.

andysat said:
Mine is cracked down the middle-I am after a clear one as a replacement :roll:
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Georgio said:
Yep if you look at the photo you'll see that they crack in the middle exactly where there is a v section cut into the material. This v is a bit odd as it doesn't serve any function except to make the lense weaker than it needs to be.
Andy, if I were you, repair your existing red one and keep looking for a white one, but when you get the new one if you do nothing else, glue the tabs and reinforce across the v section with some strips of sellotape. This should make the light fit for purpose.

andysat said:
Mine is cracked down the middle-I am after a clear one as a replacement :roll:
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Thanks for the advice-The v is probably there as a weak point on purpose :roll:
 
Just noticed mine is also cracked in the middle, looks like an great idea to reinforce the lens Georgio, this is going into my list of repairs.
 
Yup better to catch it before it splits all the way. If you have small hands it only takes a few minutes to remove, though be careful of the springs as one of mine fell sideways into the double walled area of the boot and jammed up requiring a couple of slammed boots to dislodge it... :D

Wa'ya said:
Just noticed mine is also cracked in the middle, looks like an great idea to reinforce the lens Georgio, this is going into my list of repairs.
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Yeah I'm thinking of visiting a friends salvage yard to see if I can find one that isn't cracked yet to reinforce it before it does.
 
If I'd known about the problem I would have done exactly that as my three nuts were way too tight.

Citation 650 said:
The original SB just required reducing tension on the 3 springs. No problem in 11 years.
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