Re: Current-rating brakelight-switch

[DMCVegas@xxxx]

The 3rd brake light that is on my car is mounted on the top of the 
highest louver. It has 4 bulbs inside, although I have no idea of what 
the bulbs rating is. The unit came from an F-body car with a rear 
glass hatch, a firebird if I remember correctly. The unit is slim 
enough that it doesn't go above the roof line. But since it was made 
to mount onto a glass surface, it comes with a rubber gasket of sorts 
that will allow it to mount snugly to the louvers. The unit looks 
stock, but since it is mount on top of the louver, it doesn't have 
that odd looking "gap" that appears from the center support blocking 
the lights. With 4 lights the unit is VERY bright. Anything over the 4 
would probably be overkill...

The unit is connected into the brake light circuit by way of having 
the wires run down thru the hollow area in the top of the rear quarter 
panel. Then is drops down right behind the rear tail lamps and is 
spliced in. It's been a year now since the installation of the 3rd 
brake light, and the switch that controls everything is just fine. But 
the extra lights do create a power drain when the motor is idling. 
Stop and go traffic isn't too bad, but long dark hills do seem to take 
their toll. Especially with the high beams on. When going down steep 
twisting grades, I usually engine brake most of the way down to keep 
my lights bright (granted though I have a 20 year old alternator with 
upgraded 60/40 & 50 watt head lights and other accessories running at 
the time). You may have different results with power drains then I do, 
or even none at all. But the brake switch should be ok to handle the 
extra load.

-Robert
vin 6585

p.s. I've never heard of LED lamps having a high failure rate in 
automovtive applications. But for my brake lights I have been thinking 
about neon...



--- In dmcnews@xxxx, Jan@xxxx wrote:
<SNIP>
>Now here's my problem: this type of brakelight has 7 5W bulbs in it, 
>if 
> I install 2 of them that would add up to 70W of extra "draw" on the 
> system. I don't think this is a real problem since this isn't a 
> constant drain (only when you brake), but I'd really like to know if 
> the switch could handle this kind of current.
<SNIP>