Page 5 - Butchering Your Aerodyne

Page 5_Layout 1 13/04/2020 09:10 Page 1

3rd BRAKE LIGHTS

As to the 3rd rear window light I have a
number of these in various type and intend
to replace the one I have as whilst it does
obscure my rear vision a little, it’s certainly
ok and is safe at night and also works as a
tail light, so I have 3 lights. I already have
something to replace it, when I have done
all the other jobs first. Even with the bright-
est bulb you can get, the small size of a
401’s rear lights are nowhere near as bright as I would like. Perhaps a Candle in the back window? Al-
lowing of course for the other idiots on the road!
The photo right shows a standing model that can be fitted
hanging down but would surely interfere with rear vision the other
photos show different types designed for a rear window and there
are many types of these.
Brake lights on modern cars are very much larger and
brighter than ever and the 401 lights are certainly very, very infe-
rior by today’s standards. Nope, not more holes drilled I thought,
so I decided to fit a high-level brake light in the back window for
added safety. there are of course many to choose from for various
cars but I decided to stay at the cheap end with some “stick ons”.
I tried several types until I found one that looked “reasonable”. To fit the wiring, I loosened off the
inner metal frame of the window and eased the wiring
behind it until it came out at the bottom and looked quite
neat. After attaching the wires hey presto, it worked well
looked neat enough and didn’t block any vision through
the rear window to badly.
Alas, some strong Sun appeared the following day
and the stick pads failed to work on the window. A
scramble in the garage and I tried another stronger sticky
pad but this failed on the window as well two different
sticky pads and finally the pads stuck excellently, I
thought, more sun and the pads remained firm but the brake light decided it wasn’t going to stick to the
pads. The result was two pads firmly stuck to the window but the brake light was then dangling down
from its wire - O-hell! The brake light would actually look
even better attached to the inner frame but removing the
rear window to drill two holes was definitely not an op-
tion.
A visit to an engineer friend and he came up with a
solution, this was to attach a thin “U” shaped piece of
metal to the brake light and then hook it over the metal
inner window frame a very neat and tidy solution. How-
ever, to do this simply with just one “U” fitting I really
needed another type of brake light, so on to another type and I finally got 3rd Brake light fitted but it did
obscure some of my rear vision but not too badly and was certainly not unsafe, see the top left photo.
However, in my mind this was only a temporary solution until I eventually get around to fitting one of
the other lights I have!
Another alternative would be the flexible rear window light (middle right). It measures about 35”
by just over .5” and .3”. this is a stick on and can be wrapped around the window frame. However, whether
or not the hot sun will affect the stickiness remains to be seen. On the Middle left are Bumper “stick-
ons”, which are 8.5” long by just over 1.5” by .75”.