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LED third brake light modification.  To preface, my 1994 Z34 Lumina was driving down the road, and the third brake light trim cover fell onto the back seat. Upon a little inspection, the 3rd brake light housing was in sorry shape, and had been glued together in the past.  Ordered a used light off eBay.    So the factory bulbs are halogen 891 bulbs. There are a handful of sellers on Amazon that say they sell led versions of them. I was skeptical that they would fit in the housing.   I had 194 led bulbs and sockets on hand, and decided to go with those.    So the first thing, is to pop off the red lens, easy enough.  Then use a uni-bit on a drill to open up the sockets to 5/8th inch    From here, need to cut some lugs into the light housing for the 194 bulb sockets to thread into.       I used a small 3 sided file. Took all of 15 mins to do. Then a little bit of wiring to do… splice wires and old connector together.   Clean it up, snap the lens on it, and enjoy.    This took all of 30 mins to do, with stuff I had on hand. I’m not a fan of the oddball bulbs that were in it, and glad I changed them.

I believe it has that dip or channel in it so that it locks to the metal base and follows it's curves.  

If you can recall, did that rubber NOS piece have that molded dip in it or is the rubber pliable enough to make those curves? I`m looking to replace this on 3 cars and it looks like the same between 1st gen W sedans and coupes/verts.     

Did it make it to 200k?

It definitely takes dedication to own a Northstar Caddy AND keep it running reliably for that many years, especially in a salt belt state !  All joking aside, they are nice engines, and can be made fairly reliable if you know their weak spots.  I know that it's not exactly the same, but the Shortstar we had in our Intrigue years back was arguably more reliable than any 60 degree V6 or even 3800 i've ever owned. It reliably needed the oil level topped off every 1500 miles or so, but outside of a bad CKP sensor and an alternator....that powertrain was rock solid up until the day we scrapped it due to rust.