Nick's Land Rover - Series III Rebuild

The recent accident was a bit of a wake up call to improve my rear lighting. Even though the car that I hit was not indicating and didn’t have its brake lights on, the incident highlighted that clear and obvious brake lights would be a significant improvement over the rather pathetic lights fitted to Series Land Rovers and Defenders, especially their brake lights, which are small and not that distinct from the tail lights.

To that end, I have fitted a high level brake light in the rear door’s window. It’s a slim-line LED unit from S-V-C.co.uk that consumes very little power, and so has slim enough wires to be easily threaded through the door’s frame, joining up with the wiring harness for the window heating element and wiper motor.

All I had to do was make up a couple of mounting brackets (the unit’s own mounting feet don’t quite reach the dor frame with the LED aperture fully below the window edge line), drill the holes for the mounting screws and wiring, and make the connections to the right brake light connector.

To pass the wiring through the door frame, I had to remove the window retaining screws on the lock side of the door (the hinge side has anti-crish tubes through the frame for the hinge bolts, which would get in the way of the wires) so that the wire didn’t get caught on the screws inside the frame. The earth was connected to the wiper motor mounting bolts using a ring terminal, and the positive feed was run through the corrugated rubber hose for the door electrics and into the internal right side rear light cover. A bullet connector was soldered to the end of the feed wire to allow it to be fitted to the standard 4-way Lucar connector in that side. I also removed a rectangle of the window tinting film matching the dimensions of the LED aperture so that the LEDs shine through clear glass, so as not to reduce their intensity.

The results are very pleasing – it’s very neat on the inside, with only the smallest run of visible wiring, and is all but invisible from outside until activated. Its brightess when on is greater than that of the standard brake lights when viewed from directly behind. It should make a big difference in making clear to other drivers when I’m braking, especially given the way that the roof rack ladder can mask the left side lights at some angles.

Accessories, Bodywork, Electrics

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