hi guys, i own a mk1 octavia estate and have just noticed the centre (led strip) brake light in the rear spoiler is not working but the other two are. i thought that individual led's would fail but not the whole strip. Has anyone else had this problem and could give my some pointers of where to start looking please. Thanks in advance 

I would start by checking that you have a good earth and 12+ feed when the brake pedal is pressed.

Possibly broken wire in the tailgate wiring grommet?

mine stopped but it was practically falling out so didn't have to do much fault finding. all fixed and sealed in. Give me a shout or look at my posts for what I did. There is a brake light switch somewhere that you can check i believe but not sure where. Other then the usual, its light out job which is a couple of hours, start to finish with soldering! Good luck 

Check that you're actually getting 12v at the positive terminal of the light. If not, continuity check the feed wire, then the earth wire and earthing point.

 

If none of that works, then the LEDs really are broken.

I thought they were individual small cap less bulbs in the high level brake light not LED's? I could be wrong though? My mistake didn't read it properly. I see your on about the one in the spoiler. [emoji12]

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Edited 14 October, 201411 yr by Guest

The estate is different in that it has LEDs in a light assembly whereas the hatchback has individual bulbs. My guess is the wires go behind the cover in the boot where you access the left rear lamps. Brown wire goes to body/earth and red+black is the live. If you can't trace the wires from the lamp you could isolate the brake light assembly alone and check with a multimeter. Do it both ways round on the leads as the resistance should be high one way and low the other; actual values depend on the current or voltage source in your multimeter.