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Third brake light bulb...

9K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  G6Dad37 
#1 ·
My daughter has a 2009 G6 and had two bulbs in her third brake light go out...

I went to Auto Zone and purchased two packs of 912 bulbs to replace all three... after fighting with the brake light cover for 20 minutes I was thinking this would be a fairly straight forward process...

Getting the old bulbs out of the 1/4 turn sockets proved to be quite the exercise... after finally getting them out and “plugging” the new bulbs into the 1/4 turn sockets I was rewarded with none of the bulbs illuminating...

I didn’t have my circuit tester with me as I was doing this in the parking lot of her apartment and how difficult can changing a couple of light bulbs be, right???

Anyway, I am going back down to her apartment tomorrow evening to try and get the bulbs working...

I saw something in my limited search about having to solder the new bulbs into the 1/4 turn sockets but it wasn’t really clear... the manual in the glove box was no help either...

Can someone PLEASE tell me what needs to be done to get these bulbs to illuminate?

Any help, advice, etc.... will be GREATLY appreciated!!!
 
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#3 ·
Replacing the bulbs one by one is possible but the trick is getting the bulbs tiny wires to keep contact with the sockets little metal tabs. Soldering doesnt help much either. Wont hold together. The third brake light in g6 sedans are sold as a complete assembly. I went and bought one off a junker and replaced it with some 194 LEDs and yes the black cover might as well break when you try to get it off.
 
#4 ·
I was actually able to find a solution for those replacing the bulbs in the future.

Keep in mind I just used the standard bulbs as available at Advance Auto, Autozone, etc... IRRC they are #729...

Anyway, if you look at the bulb and the 1/4 turn socket you will see the contacts do not line up. The 1/4 turn socket has an extremely thin wire at the bottom that would come in contact with the bulb contact wires.

What I did was pull the contact wires away from the bulb. I then bent the bulb contact wires so they came in direct contact with the side of the inside of the 1/4 turn socket. Essentially, this does away with the need for the extremely thin wire at the bottom of the 1/4 turn socket.

I did have to bend the external contacts of the 1/4 turn socket upward. This insured contact and made the 1/4 turn socket fit much tighter.
 
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