Thread: Brake light stopped working

Hi simoncs

Good place to start is with a new globe, Yes its a standard twin fillament brake/tail light type of globe , auto places, servo etc will have them.

connock

thanks - will try that first then

Originally Posted by simoncs

Hi
The drivers side brake light has stopped working. Tailgate and left side work fine. Have to do pink slip soon so thought best to do it myself. Is it likely to just be a bulb? I had a look through the plastic and the filaments seems to be ok (haven't taken it out yet). Anything else i should check?
If it is bulb - where is the best source for these? I presume i don't have to get them from the dealer? thanks Simon

My thoughts are that while you do not have to purchase bulbs from Land Rover, it might be a good idea. Others may disagree.

It seems that some have experienced very odd trouble messages from the display as a result not so much of the non LR bulb when it is working, but when it fails. It seems that non LR bulbs have more of a habit of having the failed filament cross over onto the other filament. Apparently the computer monitoring such things picks this up, not as a tail light bulb failure, but as for example, a transmission failure or similar big deal bad news message - but it is false.

What you do not have to do is get Land Rover to replace the bulbs. For some reason, bulb replacement is one of the few easy tasks.

Basically one opens the tail gate and undoes two screws near the weather stripping and then pulls rearward on the red plastic lens assembly to dislodge two hidden plastic holds on the other side of the assembly. One removed, I tend to look at all the bulbs and replace any that look smoky so that I do not have to redo the effort next week again. If you purchase the LR bulbs, I suggest that you ask the parts guy to give you two of each bulb that go in the tail light assembly - then you will have some spares.

Also the real little side marker bulbs are probably W3W bulbs, not W5W. (not certain for Oz). LR has bagged W5W bulbs in W3W packages, at least here in Canada anyway. The W5W five watt bulbs are yes, brighter, and that may seem good, but they are also hotter, and can melt the plastic bulb holer inside the assembly - at least in the NAS front headlight assembly. Guess how I know? It pretty much takes a bright light and either good eyes or a magnifing glass to read the actual bulb number on the W?W glass.

Or you could get LED bulbs - brighter - virtually no heat and they last "forever" ... well they last a long, long time as compared to normal bulbs.
Check out Disco3.uk and do a search for LED bulbs. The member who sells them is called - hids4u.
cheers

Originally Posted by oldsalt

Or you could get LED bulbs - brighter - virtually no heat and they last "forever" ... well they last a long, long time as compared to normal bulbs.
Check out Disco3.uk and do a search for LED bulbs. The member who sells them is called - hids4u.
cheers

To add to the story, the W5W's melted into the front side marker and are sort of still there - well pieces of the bulb anyway, and the holder is not round any longer. To make it worse, I did it on both sides before I figured out the problem - that my "precious" stock of genuine LR bulbs were mis-packaged.

It look Land Rover here about 5 months to get the packaging sorted out and get real W3W bulbs back in stock as their computer inventory systems told them there were already lots of W3W in the country.

And yes, those LEDs that hids4u sell are better than the usual offshore specials. Also one can choose the colour of white to match up with what one wishes - they seem to understand that white is not necessarily "white", nor is it blue.

Originally Posted by bbyer

My thoughts are that while you do not have to purchase bulbs from Land Rover, it might be a good idea. Others may disagree.

It seems that some have experienced very odd trouble messages from the display as a result not so much of the non LR bulb when it is working, but when it fails. It seems that non LR bulbs have more of a habit of having the failed filament cross over onto the other filament. Apparently the computer monitoring such things picks this up, not as a tail light bulb failure, but as for example, a transmission failure or similar big deal bad news message - but it is false.
.

Yep been there , a bad earth will do that to any bulb. Check the globe holder to see if the small copper strip that makes contact with the side of globe is not pressed in if so prize it out cearfully a bit so you get a good earth to globe.