New member here sharing my 245 tail light cure!

wgusler · Post by **wgusler** » 10 May 2016, 21:00

Bought my daughter a 1989 245DL as her first car and have been tinkering with it for a while. Slowly have fixed and replaced allot of things including the tail lights. Ordered some IPD aftermarket lights and installed them with new bulbs 2 years ago.

Thought all my " Hey dad, my brake light, turn signal isn't working again" troubles were over. Meh! Nope, still had to do a tail light fix / twist/ wiggle on a regular basis. Daughter bought a new car and sold it to her brother as his college transportation. Now the housings are melting and the lights constantly go out...........Yea!

While I have been impressed with the quality and tank-like qualities of the " Swag Wagon" as the kids call it, the guy who designed the tail lights needs to quit and get his job back at the toy factory. They suck.

Decided to hard wire them and make a harness for each to eliminate the contact problems. They will now be all LED lamps to avoid the melting problem. Ordered new housings, a complete set of OEM Volvo lamp holders, a full set of LED Lamps, resistors for the turn signal lamps and some 5 wire connectors from Amazon.

First, I removed all the contact points from the housings Then cut the tabs off the lamp holders and bent the tabs down to solder them.
Soldered new ground and source wire to each one and Installed in the housing and added the 5 wire connectors

Hard mounted the LED resistors to the body and attached to the ground point then attached the factory light signal wires, the resistors and the chassis ground to the other side of the 5 wire plug.

Put it all back together and tested the lights..............Wow! They are bright as can be and look great. The turn signal resistors work like a champ, I also changed the front turn signals to LEDs.
One change I made was to wire the brake signal wire also to the top unused fog light, now the brake lights up the top lens and the bottom lens. Can't miss the brake lights on this one now.

Still have the tailgate wiring harnesses to change to get the third light and the tag lights back up and running. Job for next weekend.................then we might need some new halogens in the front

93Regina · Post by **93Regina** » 11 May 2016, 08:03

wgusler wrote:Put it all back together and tested the lights..............Wow!

Brake and Run lights are at different intensities, so how did you naviagate this issue?

Got photos?

thx

wgusler · Post by **wgusler** » 11 May 2016, 10:16

The lower light is a dual element (1157) bulb and the top is a single ( 1156) bulb. The LEDs are really bright and the brake light on the lower 1157 was not much brighter than the running light when applied. Looked like you just lit a second bulb in the same housing, not the normal brake light contrast where the brake is much brighter than the running light.

My initial set up was to use the top bulb as a second running light, but changed it to a second brake light. I simply ran the yellow brake light wire to the single tab on the bottom 1157 and the top 1156. Now the top brake light looks brighter than the lower light, no matter, as the end result is the brake lights are easily visible now in light or dark conditions. I will change the third lamp to an LED after I replace the tailgate wiring harnesses next weekend. No missing when the old swag wagon hase thge brakes on now.

As far as the intensities, I think it just may be the design of the LEDs that is the problem here.

I have photos and will try and edit them into the original post.

wgusler · Post by **wgusler** » 11 May 2016, 10:32

Here are some photos during the process and the running lights and brake lights at night.

: P1060243E.jpg (118.33 KiB) Viewed 1881 times