I want to do the Brake Light Mod, and do not have or want the Rear Fog option.....what guage wire is best to make the jumper between pins 1 and 4 for a tight fit....and how do you remove the wiring harness from the tail light assembly so you can work on it....are there tabs someplace to press to release the harness?.....I don't want to remove the whole assembly with the bulbs, just the wiring.....but if I did want to remove the assembly to change a bulb, or to put one in in case there isn't already an orphaned rear fog bulb in the upper which is soon to become my second brakelight bulb, how would one remove that assemby?

 

All you need to do is remove the plug not the entire harness, there's a little tab there that you'll squeeze and pull the plug right out.

As for the jumper, people have used nothing more than a paperclip to do the trick. Other people have used the snap on wire taps from Radio Shack to make a splice between the two wires.

 

I haven't gone out yet to look closely at the wiring connector harness (it has been freakin' cold here) but where will the tabs be on the connector...on each side left and right, or top and bottom or right in the front?

 

It's been a while since I've been in there, but when you grab the connector, you'll feel it. Should be on the top of the connector...

 

Hundreds or thousands of people have done the brake light mod.

Two owners have posted notes (one on NAM and one on Yahoo group) that their Body Control Module quit working the brake lights and it had to be replaced. This is the electronic device that controls ALL MINI lights. I don't know what it costs, but I am sure it is not cheap.

Since the brake light mod puts a 200% load on the transistors in the BCU, the dealer did not warranty the BCU on the car that showed up with the jumper still in place.

There are many reasons a BCU might fail, including a Deffective bulb shorting out. In any case you could be driving around with no brake lights until you discover the problem.

If the BCU fails and you have the brake light mod.....

I used LED bulbs, which only draw 10% of the current that a normal bulb draws, so my total draw is 110% not 200%. Of course if the BCU fails for some other reason, I still have the jumper to deal with before it goes in for service.

John

 

I used LED bulbs, which only draw 10% of the current that a normal bulb draws, so my total draw is 110% not 200%. Of course if the BCU fails for some other reason, I still have the jumper to deal with before it goes in for service.

John[/QUOTE]

Is there a website for the LED bulbs?
Thanks,
Jim

 

Personally I've never heard of this... I've been running for just short of two years with the circuit jumpered (using the diode mod) and haven't had any issues. Heck, the diodes were in place when the dealer actually programmed the rear fogs... Should it blow something out, ten seconds and both diodes are gone w/out a trace...

And thinking about it, if you have the rear fogs on and step on the brakes, you should be putting the same kind of load on the BCU whether there's a jumper there or not.

 

The extra load is not from fog and brake systems trying to power the lights at the same time. When you change from 2 brake lights to 4 brake lights, you are doubling the load that the brake light transistors have to pass.

The folks that burned them out, reported that the center brake light still worked, but both the side brake lights stopped working.

I wonder why MINI doesn't offer an option to program these lights as Brake lights. Then the transistors that normally switch the fog lights would take care of it. Depending on how the module operates, this may be easy, or impossible.

Some one asked where I got the LED's. I got mine, type 1156 LED at the local auto store, ($18 a pair). A search for 1156 LED will bring up several www vendors for under $10 a pair, plus shipping.

JD

 

Thanks for the info. That does make sense, and I do want to switch over to the more efficient LED 1156 bulbs. To clarify, would a pair be needed or 2 pairs (4)? Thanks.

 

whoa.....I was all set to go out in the cold tomorrow and do this jumper thing...but has anyone else heard of a potential problem running four brake lights instead of two, or potential warranty issues?

are the release tabs on the front on each side or just one in the middle?...again I haven't gone out to see what the harness looks like yet

 

As I recall, the tab is on the top of the plug and you squeeze it down.

As for the LED's.
In order to maintain a near normal load, so the MINI does not think it has burned out lights, leave the 1157 combination tail light brake light bulbs in place, but switch the 1156 single element bulbs to 1156 LED.

SEE COMMENTS BELOW ABOUT BRIGHTNESS OF LED BULBS. They did not impress me as being good enough to be my "only" brake lights, but I am comfortable with them as "supplemental" brake lights.

Again, Thousands of people have not had trouble, two have reported trouble, one that did not get it fixed on the warranty.

For a while I did what (I think it was Great Bear) recomended. I just rearanged some wires so the top bulbs were the brake lights and the bottom bulbs were tail lights only, thus having the more obvious separate brake lights. The other person did it with a dremel tool and a soldering iron. I discovered that the plug disasembles quite easily and you can just swap the wire in cavity 1 with the wire in cavity 4 in under 1 minute.

A search of these forums will turn up lengthy discussions.

John

 

I got the LEDs but went back to the old bulbs because they were not bright enough.
I liked the idea behind the LED switch. But even though I bought the brightest I could find (24 LEDs/bulb), they were barely as bright as the regular night light, and therefor worthless for fog lights or brake lights.
If anybody knows about REALLY bright 1156 LEDs let me know, but until then, I'll keep the regular bulbs.

 

Umberto,
I did this mod last year and am sort of hazy on exactly where the tabs were. But I do remember that I used instructions that OctaneGuy wrote up on his website for it. They were very thorough and helpful. Here is a link to them:
http://www.littlemini.us/technical/brakemod/index.asp

I recall it was a bit frustrating getting in there and feeling blindly to undo the tabs you are asking about. I think if you take a small mirror out it helps to first see what you are trying to do. You won't be able to watch while you do it, but you will see what is in there. It was something of a pain, but not so bad. I would do it again in a minute. For me, the safety of it trumps the hassle. Running them for a year with all four bulbs still warning of my intentions. But not a lot of stop and go traffic, either. :smile:
Cheers!

 

I agree that the LED are not as bright as the incadescant unless viewed directly in line with the beam. Since the mini has a normal "diffuser" lens the beam on the bulb and the beam of the lens do not line up perfectly. I kept the regular bulbs for the regular lights, and used LED only for the Added bulbs. On one of my other vehicles (a trailer) I had switched to LED's for durability, but found them too dim and went back to regulars.

As for reaching the wire. Well if you really want to see what you are doing, the tail lights come out of the car very easily. Just undo the (10mm deep socket) nut that holds the light in, then slide it out. Everything is easy to do, then you put the tail light back in.

JD

 

Just to clarify, the top lights (the ones activated - the fogs) are bulb #1157, and the lowers (dual element for running and brake lights), are bulb #1156?

I like Jdewey's idea about going with LEDs on the top, or added fogs, although they are a bit more dim... Knowing that they add only an extra 10% load, and the longevity factor is nice... Just want to make sure to see if I need to get 1156 or 1157. Thanks.

 

I can't help but think this is being blown out of proportion here. Only two people out of thousands over 3 model years have had a problem that we know of. It this was more of a widespread issue the boards would be CRAWLING with people ranting about the problem (and quite a few fixes as well).

Even the person who brought this up says that the one person who had their warranty denied, and that was because they left the jumpers in place....

With no tools and no experience the entire process would take you 15 minutes MAX to put in. If you just jumper the circuit, should you need to remove the jumpers you can do so in less than 10 SECONDS.

 

That's backwards. 1157 is a dual-filament bulb - tail/stop. 1156 is a single filament, such as for a turn-signal or, in this case, fog light.

 

Re the BC1 failures ...

The brake lights are driven by an automotive spec driver, Motorola MC33286. These parts are basically bullet proof, protected from overtemperature, overcurrent, etc, etc, etc. PCB tracking looks to be about 40thou, which is OK to 4amps - so two 21W bulbs on one track is close my companies track rating limit, but there is still lots of safety margin there (there are separate outputs for each brake light).

The extra load due to the second bulb is significant but should not by itself be able to fail the BC1 (which of course should not fail even if there is a short on the wiring!)

 

TonyB,

If you want the ones I bought, let me know. How's $10 including shipping sound? (They cost me $24). They're brand new 1156 24/LEDs per bulbs (the brightest I could find).

 

GBMINI, I'm glad you got technical before I did. That way I dont have to be the only one dealing with looks of

I wouldnt have boasted about this mod if I knew that it would cause grief later on. Rare is the electronic module that does not have numerous input and output protection circuitry these days. The foldback/limiting circuits are more than enough to protect against module damage, not to mention the fusing of the supply lines. Also, the diode mod when compared to the simple jumper mod offers a bit of a inrush load relief as the brake light bulb voltage has to rise a bit before the diode conducts and the fog light bulb is seen as additional load. It softens the 'initial hit'.

Besides, the chip can take a 30 amp load momentarily without damage. It can also take a full-on short circuit with no damage either due to it's shutdown circuitry. I think those two instances where the BC! was damaged was a fault in the modules themselves, not due to anything the owner did to the car in the way of modifications.

I investigated LED lights a while back not so much for their reduced current needs, but for their instantaneous light when turned on compared to normal lamps. The problem is, a lamp housing designed around the omnidirectional light output of a typical incandescent bulb tends not to look right or be nearly as effective when used with a commonly available LED replacement lamp who's light output is mostly focused in a narrow cone in line with it's base. You end up with a bright spot of light surrounded with the remaining darkness of the surrounding lens since there is no light filling in from the internal reflectors and ambient lighting. Once someone comes up with a bright, wide-angle LED lamp, it would make a decent replacement.

 

me too

 

GB MINI
Thanks for the information. It only seems logical to make the device self protecting, and now we know its rating.

I was concerned, because my 1972 Volkswagon had a transistorized turn signal, and it failed twice due to an intermitent problem in the trailer lights.

Are the same drivers used on the turn signals? I know two people towing trailers with out an isolation module. One reported problems, that corrected when he disconected the trailer. The other has never had any difficulty.

I have a Hoppy trailer light driver on mine, Which takes about a 1 ma signal from the car wiring, and drives the trailer from the battery.

John

 

Given how many people have done this mod without any problems that was my thought... Although it's nice to have the two resident electronics and wiring gurus agree with that theory

 

My things to do/buy list for after work just got a bit shorter . The "GBs" have spoken: GBMINI & of course the Greatbear.

CoryB, thanks for the clarification also, and Xman for the offer. With the diodes in-place, I'm going to stay put with the stock bulbs...

 

Can't blame you, I did the same thing.