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Plan for wagon center brake lamp, but...


scottmcphee

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I'm trying to get my wagon spoiler off because I have a plan for those LED's!

 

I downloaded the whole photo album of vacation pictures, but there seems to be one "post card" is missing. Specifically, in the exterior & interior trim chapter, the file names jump from "10 - Cowl Panel.pdf" to "12 - Side Sill Spoiler.pdf", and dang it in between there is supposed to be file "11 - something??" with a page EI-40 telling us how to R&R the wagon spoiler.

 

Anybody got that particular page of the vacation pix? And / or equivalent information to do the job?

 

 

Regards

Scott

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I got the spoiler off, here's how:

 

there are three nuts and two rubber things covering snaps you can see, take these out

 

take the interior trims off the hatch (one side and top is enough), these pull off - the sides have 2 snaps and pull off more "sideways" (parallel to glass). the top trim pulls straight down - it has 4 snaps

 

disconnect the revealed brake LED connector and washer tube on the inside of the car. You'll see a little metal electrical box, mine I think was "Clarion" brand - it's an antenna amplifier, leave this alone

 

three more nuts are also revealed, you need to use a deep socket for these reaching through holes in metal - careful not to drop the nut into the body work!! (I did for one.. but miraculously got it out). Hint: use a little sticky something on the end of your deep nut driver to hold the nut

 

under the spoiler near front edge there are two more snaps you cannot see (they're blind snaps) running along the leading edge of the spoiler - just pull the spoiler up, after all the nuts are taken off...

 

lifting the spoiler, you'll see it is held down by wires to a grommet (tube and LED wires) where they come outside of the car, pop the grommet out of the metal rather than trying to pull the wires out through it - those comes along with the grommet and spoiler

 

the spoiler is now freed

 

FYI it's really ugly under the spoiler, not a pretty thing if you just want to have no spoiler, you'll need body work to shape this up

 

I abandoned the LED idea... it's a sealed unit with very little space to add any thing inside.. and I didn't want to break the seal - it would probably have destroyed the unit trying

 

 

Oh well

 

Scott

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Not to hijack, but in the local Celica club someone had her LED center brake light changed so that it would move left/right KITT style. Kinda neat, but not something I'd do.

 

There's a local alarm installer that can do some neat things with that center brake light too.

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so, what was the plan? or are you keeping that under wraps?

 

edit: just realized that you're a vendor. so i'm sure you'll keep it quiet and not give anything away.

 

i always thought that spoiler was an option?

 

Ya, but I'm an "open vendor" and tend to publish all the plans of what I do here on the forum... so I don't mind telling.

 

I was going to add detail to the way the LED bar comes on, rather than all 13 LEDs coming on at the same time. The bar would light starting from the center LED and "grow" out to each side, simultaneously, until a full bar was on. It would do this quite quickly... just "slow" enough so you could detect something different was happening. (We're talking tens of milliseconds until the whole bar is lit.) Letting off the brake and re-applying brake right away does not repeat the effect... on the second brake press the whole bar lights solid - fast. You'd have to keep off the brake for several seconds for the effect to happen again.

 

Why? Just to be different, plus I had in my mind that "exploding" the LED bar like this would be more noticeable to the following driver, more of a wake-up call.

 

Anyway it's a one-chip solution with only a few other parts, if somebody wants to follow up and do it. I built a prototype on the bench using an easy to get LM3914 chip, an RC time delay on the input..

 

Cheers

Scott

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