Hi All,
Thought I'd share something I've been working on for a little while. I wanted to add a third brake light to my touring to help improve my visibility when braking. Daily drove the car all through the winter and commuting in the dark and felt very aware that modern cars had much better lights than the E30 so wanted to do something about it. Have some plans to improve the normal tail lights too but tackled the brake light first!.
I wanted to do something that looked like it could have been there from factory, so got my hands on an E36 touring light, hoping I could chop it up enough to fit and look like it was meant to be.
Offered it up to the car and needed to cut the bottom corners to fit around the tabs on the tailgate.
Got to chopping the original mounting tabs off and slowly cutting away at the cover to fit it in snugly.
Got the light fitting nicely, removed the cover so I could work out how to mount it. Settled on some brackets which bolted to the existing tabs on the tailgate. The aluminium was bent and cut to shape, and then bolted to the tailgate with a small screw and U-nut I had spare from elsewhere on the car. I hot glued the light in the right place and then set the brackets to the light with some epoxy.
Clipped the cover back on and thats done for mounting of the light. Very pleased with the result. The rubber strip on the front edge of the cover contacts the glass the whole way round and sits very neatly.
Next I need to trim the tailgate trim to fit around this to tie it all together, and then wire it in so it actually works! But pleased with the way it looks.
No idea where to even start to get it looking better though!
