Center brake light problem - Spare Tire Ring Light

[ZigZag]

I installed a spare tire ring brake light. I think it worked fine but wasn't very bright. So I purchased another one that is basically the same but with more rows of LEDs. Very bright. I happened to be watching one of my security cam when my son was backing into the garage and I noticed that the light wasn't working. Right and left lights work fine but the ring does not. I have checked and rechecked all of the wiring with a volt meter and a continuity tester. After carefully observing it several times this is what happens. I used weatherproof connectors and they are soldered in-line.

initially, the light comes on when the pedal is depressed. It stays on for 2-5 seconds then goes off. after about 2-5 seconds it comes back on again. This repeats like 5 times and then nothing. And nothing I do can get it to happen again. If I walk away for a while (in frustration) it will do the same thing again.

I thought it might be that a microprocessor is sensing a different load than the factory light and disabling it. So I was going to put the factory light back in to see if it works normally. Unfortunately someone threw out the cable for the factory light so now I will need to order the cable in order to test it.

It is a 2020 JLR with all LED lights.

Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Any ideas on what I could do to fix it? It is making me crazy! I got the ring light to make the brake lights brighter, not make it go away.

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[ZigZag]

Nobody replied. But life goes on. I have made some discoveries about this and it makes me wonder.
As I mentioned in paragraph 2, it works and then it doesn't. We figured it has to be a software issue. So how does the "system" know it doesn't have the original stop lamp? We checked the resistance and found that the factory stop lamp has 1000 ohms of resistance and the two "ring" lamps have about 0 ohms. Hmmm... I thought that If I put the factory back on and added the ring lamp to it, that might work. It didn't. But I found that if I added a 1000 ohm resistor to the first "ring" lamp, it worked. But we really like the newer "ring" lamp so we are working on coming up with more resistance for the newer one. It had about 6x the number of LEDs. So we will do the math and come up with the proper amount of resistance and see if it works. One concern is that with more resistance, the heat generated will go up. So that might be an issue.

As I said, it makes me wonder. I see these ring lights occasionally and they seem to be propular on Amazon. But no where does anything say that you need to add resistance. I figure that the computer is determining that the lamp is faulty and tests it a few times and then turns it off until the next restart cycle. Is it possible that the people who have this installed just don't know that their lamp doesn't work? I don't think so. It seems that I only see them as an additional lamp and not as a replacement. So maybe that is it. But mine don't work even as an additional lamp.

I know that there must be someone on here that has experienced this. Any response would be helpful.

 

[Krondor]

Your first light was what I bought too:

https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/fo...entures-continued-punkn-jlr.11524/post-995471

Running up on three years later and it is still working great.

I would suspect, much like trying to use Baja Design Pro lights in my fog light position, that anything that draws more than the expected current will shutdown the line. Seems everything is controlled by the bus these days.

My install was simply wiring the wheel directly using the original wires that were going to the center brake light. I didn't use the weather proof connectors, but soldered and heat shrunk followed by cloth wrapped the line.

The multiple led ring might be drawing too much current. Go back to the single ring and make sure to get the polarity right. LEDs don’t like current in the wrong direction.

 

[rockadile]

I started out with the Quadratec unit with the single ring of LEDs. It is the model that doesn't require splicing. I've had it for a few years and I just replaced it with a unit with several rows of LEDs...looks very similar to the unit you're having a problem with. I am not experiencing nay problems with the new, multi-row unit. The only difference is I bought the model, again, with the plug instead of the one which requires splicing. I, too, have the OEM headlights/taillights.

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