You're right, tail lights or brake lights inside the rear window would be
technically illegal, probably.
I would do it because it would attract attention from cops, and I want to
look very ordinary and  stock and normal and all legal, so as to not attract
attention.

There's another factor - if you've ever been driving at night and started to
come up on a station wagon or van with the tail lights going up the whole
rear upper corner............from a long way off it's hard to get a good
bead on what it is, we get so used to see 'tail lights down there, with
license plate between' ..........on 'most' vehicles. 

I do like the idea of brighter than stock tail lights though. 
There is also room in there to make two rear bulbs on each side. There's an
un-used socket behind a red portion of the lens I believe on both sides.  We
could have two tail light bulbs on each side. I've never bothered to do, but
I doubt it would be that hard, and it would give redundancy to each side for
tail light function. 
Scot
turbovans

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Edward Maglott
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 6:34 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: LED taillights WAS: Re: repost optional bulb sizes/wattages?

I bought a couple of these for $5
each:  http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=17384+LA

My plan is to enclose them in something small and opaque and stick
them to the inside of the back window glass in either the upper or
lower corners.  I sometimes carry bikes on the back of my van and
they further obscure the already dim lights.  So these would be
higher and brighter and very visible, and probably illegal on a
technicality.  They only have 2 brightnesses where the vanagon has
separate tail/brake/turn lights.  I have a "hoppy" converter so I can
connect a standard 4 wire trailer connector to the van, so that makes
the conversion for me.  The problem I've seen so far with these
lights is that there is not much difference between the 2
brightnesses.  It seems like they worked per the description when I
first got them, with only 6 of the bulbs lighting on one circuit and
all 12 on the other.  Now it seems they all light on both circuits,
just at different intensities.  I'll post more if I have success on
this project.

Edward