Third Brake Light upgrade 03 Es300
 

Hey all, I’ve wanted to change my 3rd brake light for a while now and I think I’ve driven myself to actually do it. I’m looking for any upgraded 3rd brake light. Also if I upgrade it and remove the hub for good I also need to find a beige patch to cover up the old one. Anyone have any advice?
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You want to upgrade the light, how?

Hello,

If I understand correctly, there are a couple of ways you can go about upgrading the third brake light. The easiest one is to just get a LED bulb instead of stock one and call it a day; there are also special LED lights designed for cars with Light Failure Sensor (just like your car), so it should be a straight plug-and-play upgrade, although there are some drawbacks to that light bulb, we'll come back to them later..

The more complicated option will be to use a 12V LED strip on the reflector - it is possible to take a third brake light assembly apart completely without any damage, then you can just stick some LED strip on the reflector and assemble it all back together. The best part about it is that you can make your third brake light as unique as you want it to be, just be sure not to blind everyone around.. That said, there are also a couple of drawbacks with this method - I am not sure how good would it work out, and again, you will also have to deal with the Light Failure Warning signal on the dash.

The third solution was proposed by 01LEXPL back in the day, he basically just used a LED brake light off of some GM car, here you can find more information. Other than a GM light, there are also plenty of generic ones on sale, you just need to see which one will suit your fancy.. The only correction I would want to make is try to preserve the stock wiring, instead of cutting it, you can probably get away with making an adapter for the stock pigtail or even re-pin it with something a bit more suitable. If nothing else, it will at least give you some wiggle room should you decide to revert all the upgrades.

As for the Light Failure Sensor, there are a couple of ways to deal with it - I already described the easiest one, just get a bulb with a built in resistor, but those are expensive and tough to find. The easier and more practical solution will be to get a separate resistor that you can tap into the wiring, those are pretty cheap, but also quite bulky. The third option, while the most correct-ish, is the most complicated - you will need to access the Light Failure Sensor that is located under the rear seat (at least in 2nd-gen ES300), take it apart and replace the reference resistor with a lower value one, or just de-pin the wire that goes to the light in the cluster.

Those are pretty much all the options I can think off..

Hope this helps and best of luck!