Changing brake light function

[RedRyder]

A guy I work with drives a 6th gen Maxima ('04 to the layman) and put an amber LED bulb in his rear turn signal so he changed his tail/brake light wiring. The reason being, his turn signal was also a parking light, (like on a 6GA coupe) and obviously he didn't want an amber parking light on the rear illuminating whenever he had his parking lights on.

What I am looking to do is alter my tail light wiring to the turn signals so that they only illuminate when I engage the turn signal. Meaning when I flip on my parking lights, the only tail lights illuminating are the bottom segments at the corners, and the trunk lights. Since I have converted my tails to LED's I think having an on/off signal (instead of bright/dim) would be a nice touch.

Wiring diagrams in my Haynes are difficult to read, so wanted to see if someone had done this or had an idea. Surprisingly, a search yielded little. I would have thought this would have been done a few times.

Yes I have a coupe ('99) and no, I am not using amber bulbs. Thanks for your input.

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Pics:

Before

After

I forgot to update this thread. All I did was cover the lead the red wire went to on the bulb and I got the desired effect. So KnightRyder's suggestion worked great. Thanks everyone for your help!

Love the way the rear looks now with the parking lights on, and I love how the turn signal is now just on or off.

 

[Nismode]

Wouldn't a red/amber switchback do something similar (besides being on actually)?

 

[RedRyder]

^it would. But I don't want to have light switching colors, and I'm not looking to use amber. I just want to alter the wiring so the turn signal bulb is on or off, and have it not be a parking light any more.

 

[Sketch o5]

you could just cut the power wire for the constant on to the bulb, when your parking lights are on. easy to fix if you want to go back too, just reconnect it. a 12v tester would be all you need.

 

[finch13]

Don't the coupe have 4 tail lights and then 2 red turn signals on the top of the triangles?

 

[RedRyder]

you could just cut the power wire for the constant on to the bulb, when your parking lights are on. easy to fix if you want to go back too, just reconnect it. a 12v tester would be all you need.

How would I use the 12v tester to find out which wire is the power for the constant? Yeah I would like to have an easy way to hook them up again if I ever changed my mind.

Don't the coupe have 4 tail lights and then 2 red turn signals on the top of the triangles?

Yup 4 lights (all bottoms) are parking lights/brake lights. Tops of the triangles are parking lights/turn signals. I just like how the rear lights look when just the bottoms are on, sort of 3-Series coupe-esque.

 

[Sketch o5]

I use the 12v tester to find out which wire is the power for the constant?

yeah. you could put your parking lights on and your hazard lights on, and then go to the wires on the connector for the bulb and use the tester to see which wire is the one that makes the tester blink....then thats the one for the turn signal. then the one that you test that will be fully on, on the tester, should be the constant on for the parking light. its a dual filament bulb, im pretty sure, so the turn signal should still work.

the easy way to turn the constant off would be to just cut the wire for it. if you would want to go all out though, you could take out the pin from the connector and just tape it further back, on the harness for the tail light.

 

[RedRyder]

yeah. you could put your parking lights on and your hazard lights on, and then go to the wires on the connector for the bulb and use the tester to see which wire is the one that makes the tester blink....then thats the one for the turn signal. then the one that you test that will be fully on, on the tester, should be the constant on for the parking light. its a dual filament bulb, im pretty sure, so the turn signal should still work.

the easy way to turn the constant off would be to just cut the wire for it. if you would want to go all out though, you could take out the pin from the connector and just tape it further back, on the harness for the tail light.

Thanks I don't have much experience with auto wiring. I'll give this a try. I would like to do it right and alter the pin, I'd prefer not to cut the wire unless I have to. I'm going to pick up a tester and give this a go though. Thanks for giving me a place to start.

About the dual filament bulb, I am using an LED bulb in place of it. But it still behaves like a dual filament though, so I would think changing the wiring would have the same effect either way.

 

[Sketch o5]

if youre using an led, youll have to solder in a resistor so that you dont get hyper blinking.

but since its made to take the place of a dual filament bulb, yeah, it should work just the same as the bulb would.

 

[KnightRyder]

if all you're trying to do is keep the corner from lighting up during the dim running light mode and only come on during the bright blinking mode, its super easy.

look at the base of the bulb, there are 2 contacts, put a piece of electrical tape over one of them and it'll turn off that particular light, just test to see if the one you have covered is the bright or the dim contact. this way you dont have to cut any wires so you can always revert back to a halogen bulb.

i have the exact same thing done to my tails. my upper corners dont light up at all until i hit the blinkers.

both contacts at the bottom of the bulb are positive one engages the dim mode, one engages the bright mode, the ground is the entire side of the bulb.