I was drawn to this website from numerous positive comments from various car and DIY lighting forums. I began researching how I might convert my third (incandescent) brakelight housing over to LED lighting. I am not well versed in making my own LED boards so I wanted something I could retrofit fairly easily into my third brakelight housing and I wanted the final product to look polished and OEM so to speak.
Scientific studies have shown that LED lighting, especially those in brake lights, can contribute to a 0.2s advantage in stopping response from those behind you due to the ability of LEDS to energize instantly. Originally I had tried various plug and play replacement-style LED bulbs, but unfortunately the brightness in the daytime was poor compared to the OEM incandescent light bulb - for me, this was unacceptable. What is the point of converting over to LED when there is a compromise in brightness. This is when I started researching alternatives.
I purchased a spare third brake light housing (used) and starting by first measuring the dimensions, then set off trying to find a solution that would be as bright or hopefully brighter, than the original incandescent bulb in daytime situations, yet have the response of LEDs. The housing was trapezoidal in shape and tapered as one goes from the red reflector lense towards the inside. One clear lensed 1156 bulb powered the assembly.
As luck would have it, I discovered Oznium and thought I found the perfect solution - to use flexible strip lights, possibly 3 strips cut to size, to fit inside the third brake housing. However, as I delved deeper in the actually technical information of some of the flexible strips, even the tri-chip versions, it became clear that the number of LEDs per inch would probably not provide enough light in the space I was considering.
I keep searching and searching then came across the Superflux LED dome light - the 2" x 2" version with 25 LEDs per module. Since the Superflux LED itself contains 4 smaller SMD LEDs, the amount of light should be perfect. However, they were designed for dome lights. I thought that even so, technically they should be able to be used in almost any location. I purchased two dome light modules in cool white and spliced them together, finishing the connections with solder and heat shrink tubing. I then used one of the enclosed 1156 adapters and tested. I was originally going to choose the modules in red, but the cool white LEDs had higher specifications for brightness. Also, the original incandescent bulb was technically white and not red. After hooking up the modules to a 12v power supply and test mounting them in the third brake housing, my jaw dropped once I powered them up. I'll sum it up in two words, "absolutely amazing."
* My only caveat for other DIYers is that my third brake light is not mounted behind tinted glass. For those that have heavily tinted rear glass/windows or are planning to use it behind such glass, test out the module first if possible to see if the brightness is acceptable.
PLUS: uses Superflux LEDs, very thin, comes with high quality 3M adhesive tape, high LED density per inch, flexible size of 2" x 2", comes with many adapters for various different bulb sizes, good wire length, brightness in daytime behind *non-tinted glass, low heat generation, fast shipping and well packed
MINUS: unknown reliability/durability (though LEDs are supposed to have very high MTBF running times)
