controlling brake lights with switch. anyone do it?

was with a couple buddys talking to an old hotrodder and he told us how back in the day he would have his taillights hooked up to a switch so that when they were racing and if the cops were after them they could apply the brakes without them lighting up. it was not the first time i had heard of this being done. wondering if anyone on here does it and any good stories to tell from doing it

 

Not switched brakelights, but I used to enjoy popping the headlights on when someone was tailgating and watch them panic and slam the binders

Flatman

 

I'm just guessing, but was that before radar and laser speed clocking? Nowadays the officer will already have his ticket book out before your brake lights have a chance to come on Besides, you can't out run Motorola!

 

Actually, he wasn't a hot rodder, he was just your common criminal. I did a lot of street racing in the early 70's (no strips within 500 miles), and no one I can recall gave a **** about the cops unless they had drugs or 12 year old girls in the back seat. You might ask him which one...

 

The switch works good for if you decide to slow down and pull off on a dirt road around the corner while the cop is outta site. you can turn your lights off and brake w/o your brake lights giving you away.

 

when i was messing around with SCCA road racing in the early 80's , i knew of one car that had a switch to turn the brake lights on even when not braking , and could turn them off while braking....that could really mess up someone following close through the turns

 

Just be carefull that it is not actually illegal in your area/state... If they DO catch you, that is one more thing they can write you up for....

 

buy a beater and do that infront of an escalade.... youll never have to work again

 

I knew a guy back in the 70's that had a switch set up to turn all the lights out in the rear so that his tag # wouldn't be detected.

 

We used to do the same thing in Production / modified production street bike racing back in the late 70's early 80's

for a while, back when we were younger, before we went to the track to race, when we still had valid drivers licenses, we used to do quite a bit of street racing and trying to stay out of trouble, some of us used switches to disable brake lights.

reminds me of the story I heard of the criminal trying run into the dark woods to loose the cops at night, but he had those tenny's with the blinking led's

 

Its not just the bad dudes

A freind prepped squad cars and detectiive vans and trucks.. they used to put all kinds of stuff like being able to turnoff one headlite (who would think the cop cars have a lite out )bad aimed fog lamps (thats an old hippie van) an or control dome lite circuits so they could jump out undercover .. exhaust cut outs so they sound louder or quieter ( again "thats no squad cuz they have load pipes")
fake cracked gl*** etc....
mismatched wheels tires-hubcaps
off colored doors or primered spots
tricky as the crooks

paperdog

 

Cool! I want a fake cracked windshield. As long as it's not "really" cracked, I can't get a ticket, can I?

 

naw, that'll never work. you gotta do it in front of a Mercedes or the like, most people that drive Escalades are lucky to be able to afford the payments, the real high rollers wouldn't be caught dead in a caddy "suv".

 

I had a friend who did the same hing for street racing, but he did it so no one would know when he was sandbagging and riding the brake.

 

Seen it done by a few and done it myself. We do a lotta crazy **** round here. Yeah when you see the blue lights and you're in something you know is faster than their car, it's nice to have the option of killing your tail lights and just leaving them way behind.

It goes along the same line as keeping an extra fuel tank and fuel pump hooked up so you can pour gas on the highway when you're making a run for it. An extra tank with used motor oil and an electric fuel pump hooked up so you can slick up a tight turn or two. Also keeping an extra set of headlights inside your fender wells so you can see a few feet in front of you on the highway but no one can see you creep up on them till you're right there. Oh and don't forget a box attached under the rearend you can open with a swtich to drop tire spikes.

Running quad mufflers and an electric fan so you can shut off your fan and be whisper quiet.

A fella I knew got busted by a cop that had a rigged truck, he was in trouble for selling C-4 to an undercover that he stole from the local army base. When he went to a certain spot, he pulled a wire by his seatbelt which killed the fuel pump, then said he was out of gas and as he walked away to "get some more" the police cars rushed em. He found the wire, hooked it back up, and they had a chase. It only lasted a few miles before they put him in the ditch though.

I know a lotta people on both sides of the law but the guy I knew that did the craziest **** to his pickemup truck was a fella that used to make regular trips to mexico to pick **** up.

This is just here, and now days. I'm sure these fellers from the 50's and 60's have a lot better stories.

 

Oh and for switched brake lights to be effective, you gotta change lenses to something non-reflective. And if you're going to push it, you better make sure you're gonna get away. So far I've never been caught but I never tried ditching them unless I knew I could make it.

 

It was a common practice for the MOONSHINERS ...

When I got my old 40 Ford coupe ... it had the brake light kill switch and the headlights and taillights were on a different switch ... so the headlights would burn and the taillights NOT ... The steering wheel was also turned 90 degrees ... so that the cross bar would be up/down and not side to side ... it made turning the wheel easier ... at speed .

.

 

Ive done this on my streetbike about seven years ago. works like a champ on a bike you can hide behind trash cans or just about anything. I dont do that anymore though.

 

When I put the 392 Hemi in my 47 Mercury in 1975 I added a console between the bucket seats and 100 hours of wiring. The Merc has headphone plugs for both front seats and 2 for the rear p***engers. It has interior lights front and rear which are operated by toggle switches so they could be on with the doors closed or off with the doors open as well as on with the doors open. The headlights got a toggle switch, the tail lites/license light got another switch so I could be invisible from the rear.
There was one interesting night in a residential neighborhood when I got away from cop car number 148 by making a U-turn in someones front yard. I bet hes still wondering where I went. Another time I was speeding on a state highway and saw the cops brake lights as he turned around to come after me. I turned off my lights and turned down a side road. I drove down it for 10 minutes, then turned around and when I got back to the highway, the cop was gone

 

I raced a 34 five window out of Bobs Big Boy in Glendale, on the third stoplight race, a cop with the red lights flashing and comlng fast I turned right and the ford turned left with the cop after him. I booked back to Bob's and parked with a couple other bikes and went inside for cup of coffee. about an hour later the coupe came back in. he was pissed, said he got away clean said he made a right and into a long drive and was clear up to house with his lights out, the cop went right by then backed up and pulled in behind him. wrote him for evrything he could find including exhibition of speed and evading arrest and let him go. seems like he shut off his lights and left his foot on the brake. he had a switch in there first the next morning.

 

I had a switch on rev. lights ride around withe'm on meant you wanted to race. never worked "small town" and everyone knew who my family was and would never run me. ****ed ***.

 

Personally, I wouldn't want to have anything remotely close to wiring to jack with signals (brake/turn/etc...) because it would just take one crash . . . one "never saw blah blah" and an investigator to give a lawyer/jury a field day. Not worth it in my book. I've read stories of a lot of interesting things though . . . including interesting factory cheats (for racing). Like doing certain combo of switches to get computer to go into different boost settings on turbo cars . . . etc.

 

Kinda did it by mistake. Wired the tail and brake lights to the dimmer switch in the GTO. Now when your making the get away it looks like your going Mach 10 and fading out of site as you turn the dimmer down to off.

 

something like this , an old man that i worked with said they used to tap the exaust and run a pressuized bottle of used oil into the pipes to burn off into a smoke screen in the woods for when they got chased. Thats an old man talkin but he was pretty reliable. someone try it see if it works

 

Back in my street racing days, I had a switch to shut the brake lights off just in case I had to make an incon****uous
exit from the evenings festivities.

I had low mounted driving lights that served as headlights so I could shut all the lights off and make a quiet get-away.

A Fox Body Mustang and a Taurus SHO were my weapons of choice.

I have many, many stories of near misses and brushes with the law but I finally got nailed doing 250 kph in a 70 zone. I was facing losing my license for 2 years and it took that to smarten me up.The officer (an aquaintence of mine) reduced it to 150 so that I wouldn't have to spend the night in jail.

*that's 155 mph in a 43.49800 zone


Currently, my model A has a ****on stle switch on the brake pedal face that I can side step so that the brake lights don't come on. It was a temporary solution to a blown pressure switch but it still serves duty in my hot-rod.

 

I almost fell out of the chair on this one until I noticed the Canda thing. Just for those metric challenged folks . . . 250 km = [SIZE=+1]155.342798 mph.


[/SIZE]

 

my bad. Fixed.

 

Dad used to run one on his moonshine wagon back in the day...But there again....he was doing something illegal. Something hot rodders never do.

 

A friend of mine in high school had a mullet maverick with a 351 in it. was ugly but fast. anyway...to just screw with people he wired his reverse lights to a switch...we'd go do the friday night cruise things doing a little street racing. Funny thing was to get in front of some kids in dad's car then rev the motor up to about 3 or 4 grand and switch on the reverse lights....then peel out on the green and watch them freak out! good times...good times

b

 

yeah on my daily driver i have them connected to my foglight relay so hit the ****on when gettin tailgated it scares the hell out of them soccer moms