Really Mazda? A tail light story

NCLivingBrit

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So right after I got inspected my 3rd brake light went out. It's a "sealed" LED unit you are just supposed to replace, except it's $100 or so. A little Google fu shows these things usually just rust through at the connector so I figured to pop it open and see if I could fix it.

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Sorry for the blur. I dremelled off the plug housing and found cruddy looking connectors that are so thin they rusted off completely since those are supposed to be about 20mm long.

I hooked them up to power and no luck, it's not just the connector something else is wrong.

Apparently sealed means something different to Mazda. A little BFI later I find this mess.

IMG_20191124_162503335.jpg

The whole guts are rotted. Multiple components are rusted to crap and its a write off. I'm still not willing to pay $100 for another of these crappy light bars so what next?

Well I have these red led side lights. After cracking one open I find a nice shiny panel of bright red LEDs that is thin and handy. Plan is to crack both open and use those instead. I'll have to wire them to a new connector and swap out the connector in the tailgate.

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To prevent this happening again I plan to fill the entire housing with clear hot glue since the panels run cool. This should help diffuse the light and stop everything rusting to crap like the factory unit. Of course I just moved All my tools to the new shed and have no idea where the glue gun is!

Frick yo' overpriced parts Mazda!
 
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Apparently I forgot to take a Pic of the glue filled guts and it's hard to take a Pic of the light on when I'm in the footwell pushing the brake pedal, but it works great.

Total cost: couple of bucks worth of LED arrays, some tape, glue and Dremel time. Definitely better than $100. And you can get the panels in a mess of sizes on fleabay for a couple of bucks.
 
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Mazda 5, 2009 model. Apparently the internet agrees the 3rd tail light is trash.

I love pretty much every thing else about this car though.

I had an ‘07 Mazda 5. Loved that car, but they hadn’t gone to the LED lights yet so I did not have this issue.
 
I had an ‘07 Mazda 5. Loved that car, but they hadn’t gone to the LED lights yet so I did not have this issue.

The Gen 2 models fixed the issue but this isn't one of those lol
 
I thought it was a Federal requirement... Liddy's Light, when Mrs. Dole was Secy Transporation.

Oh, yeah... I remember something about NC requiring only one tail light to be legal.

NC used to require only one brake light, by curious wording, it said stop lamp, not lamps. They had a drug bust a 3 or 4 years ago that shined a light on that stupidity and they changed it to say a stop lamp on either side, with no mention of center which makes it not required equipment.

They got dumb with the brakelights for some reason, the rear marker light law is all OEM or equivalent must work, which is similar to many states laws pertaining to all lights. Pretty much every yellow or red light a manufacturer installs is put there to comply with federal code, copying that would be too easy I guess.

https://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/BySection/Chapter_20/GS_20-129.pdf
 
Few years ago my '99 Taurus wagon had all side marker bulbs out and both plate bulbs.
Been behind PD and HP and never got stopped, been at a few DUI checkpoints too, never mentioned.
Must be my Amateur Radio tags. All bulbs replaced.

I make it a habit to walk the cars when I fill up each week. Can't be so lucky twice.
 
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I have a service bed on my truck. I took it to get an inspection and the side lights did not work so they turned it down. I cut the wires off, put wire nuts on then beat the lights off with a hammer. “Now inspect it” I said. They passed it.

The window brake light in the Pathfinder didn’t work so I took it out. Glue still obvious on the window. Passed two inspections.
 
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Nice work! I hope I don’t start to have little electrical gremlins with my Mazda. At the rate I’m going though, the rest of the car will dry rot before I even put enough wear and tear on it to cause those kinds of problems.
 
Nice work! I hope I don’t start to have little electrical gremlins with my Mazda. At the rate I’m going though, the rest of the car will dry rot before I even put enough wear and tear on it to cause those kinds of problems.

That's not good. Apparently for the 5 series 1 this is the most common electrical failure as far as I can tell.
 
Nice!

I would have recommended some LED light strips from the Walmart automotive area. They're plenty bright enough and would have worked awesome, too.
 
Nice!

I would have recommended some LED light strips from the Walmart automotive area. They're plenty bright enough and would have worked awesome, too.

Yeah but I had these in the bits bin. If I'd had time I'd have gotten some high intensity strip from ebay
 
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