My 06 Coupe has an LED out in the high stop light unit on top of the package shelf at the bottom of the rear glass. It turns out that the entire lamp unit has to be replaced to fix this (I went out and bought a bulb for this, never thinking the whole unit had to be changed out). Has anyone removed one of these? Just looking at it, I see no evident mounting points and the access is pretty tight in there for my fat little fingers.

 

Hi,
Hopefully, one of the experts will respond. Until then, I can maybe help a bit. I changed mine out quite a while ago, and as I remember, the outer vinyl casing just slides straight back without any sort of attachment. It is pretty much a friction connection. The strip of lights that is inside has one male/female connector/wire harness that is easy to separate. The tricky part is where the Light Strip itself clips to remove/install. There are 2 clips, one on either side, where the Light Strip snaps into a fixed holder that is glued to the inside of the rear window. I had heard that there was a special tool for operating these tricky clips, but I just finagled it with a small screwdriver until I was able to remove the Light Strip. I'm sure that there is a specific maneuver, but I don't know what it is. The Light Strip Clips are EXTREMELY fragile, so be very careful.
Good luck!
Brian

 

Thanks for the information...I got the new lamp and put it in today. You are right on it, although there are retainers for the cover, they just don't engage very well and you can sometimes pull the cover off without pressing them in. Each retainer is a small plastic square with a slight spring action that engages in a hole in the lower side of the cover. The new lamp works fine and I am legal again. And you are right about the clips that hold the lamp unit onto the rear window mounts, they are very fragile and I broke one of the old ones when I removed the lamp unit. I think they are excessively fragile, they could have been made better to be more dependable.

 

Glad that you got it sorted out. I agree 100% that the mount could have been better designed.......
Regards,
Brian

 

The entire assembly is fragile - if it's been baked by the sun for ten plus years, expect the plastic housing to crack and crumble as you pull it back. Mine was already toast when I got the car.

If you are gentle with it you should be ok.