The rear tail lights on the TR7 TR8 are at best poor and worst pathetic! In the mid 80’s I remember seeing Warwick Gibbon’s Gold TR7 DHC braking going round a bend and to my surprise both brake and tail of the rear lights came on. The TR7 TR8 rear light unit is split into four sections, one for reverse, one for indicator/hazard, one for tail and one for brake, not combined into a single light section as is the case nowadays. Warwick had managed to find bulb holders that would hold the twin filament stop and tail lights and had thus doubled them up. You would think that by now I’d have got round to doing the same but it took Odd Hedberg in Sweden to recently post on the TR7 TR8 email list that he was going to make up a few kits with all the connectors that eventually got me moving. Odd’s kit comprises of: 4 x twin filament bulb holders P/N E99996 available from Tex Automotive Ltd (UK) www.texautomotive.com 2 x lengths of RED (one with a pink stripe to identify it) wire with a female piggyback connector on one end and a normal female connector on the other. (Odd made these long enough to cross over the boot from one side to the other and so you can have cross-fed rear lights) You don’t have to do this but while you are at it why not have belt and braces! 2 x lengths of GREEN/PURPLE wire with a female piggyback connector on one end and a normal female connector on the other. Modifications you will need to make The new bulb holders have a small lip that sticks out that you will need to grind off with a dremmel tool, file or similar to get them to fit correctly.
Remove the section I’ve coloured RED.
It should now look like this – see original holder below
It’s worth trying your first one in the holder until you get it right and then making the others match. Bulbs for this The 21W/5W double filament bulbs are the standard fitment and if you want go ahead and fit them.
However given I’d taken so long to get round to this I felt the NEW type LED bulbs were well worth looking at so I fitted them.
Much lower wattage so great for old wiring and just as bright if not brighter, plus they almost last forever so no more duff bulbs on the MOT. Wiring the whole thing up The wiring is actually very easy and straightforward although to make life easy I suggest you do one side at once that way you won’t get muddled up with the various wires. The two top sections of the light cluster are the ONLY ones you are interested in. Looking in the boot from the rear of the car the outer ones are the tail lights and the inner ones brake lights. 1. Remove the tail light holder which has a single RED wire running to it. 2. Replace it with a new holder and whatever bulb you have decided to use. 3. Fit the female with piggyback fastener of one of your RED wires to the terminal marked 2
4. Then fasten the original red wire to the piggyback fastener
5. Route the LONG red wire across to the other side’s rear light cluster. 6. Remove the brake light holder which has a PURPLE/GREEN wire attached. 7. Replace it with a new holder and whatever bulb you have decided to use. 8. Fit the female with piggyback fastener of one of your PURPLE/GREEN wires to the terminal marked 1 and then the original PURPLE/GREEN wire onto the piggyback.
9. Fit the female end of that PURPLE/GREEN wire to terminal 1 of what was once the tail light on the same rear light cluster. 10. Now repeat the process on the other side. 11. You should now have both lights in the clusters working as brake lights BUT only one will work as a tail. This is because you now need to plug in the long RED wires you routed across to either side. Simply plug the long ends into the terminal 2 of what was once just the brake light and you will have them all working. 12. A few cable ties to tidy the wires up. 13. To check everything is correct you should now have RED wires connected to all the terminal 2’s and PURPLE/GREEN wires into the terminal 1’s.
If you are making this kit up your self then either as Odd did in his kit get the right colour wires or make sure you know which colour you are using for what. My suggestion would be use the right colours it just isn’t worth the head ache figuring out the wrong colours. So does it make a difference? See for your self in the pictures below – For comparison LHS is left as standard and RHS is modified. Tail lights Daylight / Sunlight:
Stop lights Daylight / Sunlight:
Tail lights NIGHT / EVENING:
Stop lights NIGHT / EVENING:
One thing you will notice is that the brake light in the original setup (Daylight / Sunlight) does seem slightly brighter. This is down to that holder being at an angle and thus shining from the side which seems to work better for the filament than the LED. You may wish to keep the original filament type in this holder BUT the difference against the original LED taillight is extremely noticeable. Personally I’m keeping the LEDS, one less problem to worry about. Point to note is that it’s very hard to photograph lights well so in some instances there appears to be not much difference where as with the human eye there is a much greater difference. Essentially it makes a big difference and may well save you a rear end shunt one day. A mod well worth it and for the few pounds it costs for the holders, connectors and a bit of wire well worth it! The LED bulbs can be fitted to all the other lights on the TR7 TR8 except the indicators which will not function with the hazard relays unless you fit new relays. The low wattage isn’t enough to get them to work. The fog light causes issues as well given it’s reverse polarity so make sure you swap the wires round if you want to fit LED bulbs. I would imagine owners of older TR’s may also be able to use the LED’s in place of at least some of the traditional bulbs, certainly worth looking at anyway.
Richard
Richard Connew World Wide TR7 TR8 Owners Club www.tr7-tr8.com
