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]

Boards are in.



Designed some clips to hold the boards in the fixture.



Seem to fit well. The boards + clips drop right in.



The first boards have been populated. So glad I went with 2 small boards instead of one long board. These fit into the IR oven and makes assembly much easier. Waiting on the lenses for the LEDs. The Carclo 10415 lenses are as expensive as the LEDs.

The connectors will be interesting. The easiest method would be to solder some piano wire of the correct gauge onto the wires then push them into the existing sockets. Steve who was the catalyst for the project does not want to use the existing bulb sockets because of oxidation/corrosion but I'm not a fan of cutting/splicing or any way damaging the fixture.

If someone would like to try these out, please contact me. I'm giving Steve a set and someone else to try. No charge; I just ask that you report back how they fit and work.