Fronzizzle

Hello all,

Over the last couple of weeks, I spent some time upgrading the exterior lighting on my car and I wanted to share some details & pictures.

First, I started with the taillights. I've tried painting lenses before, with mixed success. I was going to try again, but instead I decided to bite the bullet and get a pair of professionally "smoked" lenses from Hawk's. You can see attached for "before" and "after" pictures.

For the bulbs, I swapped out all of the standard bulbs with LED's from superbrightleds.com. They have a ton of choices in terms of how many LED's, how many lumens, etc. I went with the recommended choice from their website, keeping the lumens the same for the turn signal and taillights.

The tail/brake lights, license plate bulbs and side markers all fit without an issue. The turn signal and back-up bulbs, though, wouldn't fit down into the socket; where the bulb meets the base was bigger in diameter on the LEDs than the stock bulbs. I carefully used a knife and a Dremel with a sandpaper to make the two sockets on each side slightly bigger. The plastic I removed was at the top of the socket, so it didn't interfere with the bulb operation or fitment; regular bulbs still work fine if I ever decide to change back.

I didn't take pictures of the light, but tinted lenses with the LED's is just a little bit brighter than the standard bulbs and stock lenses.

One other item: the first set of lenses I got from Hawk's were much darker than these, you couldn't see the red, yellow or white until the bulbs lit. That's not why I sent them back, I think they still would have worked but it appears that there is a rather large spread in the shade that they provide.

Also, I bought a replacement turn signal flasher from superbrightleds that works great. I just plugged it in instead of the stock one and the turn signals work great all the way around; it doesn't matter if you have all LED or a mixture of normal and LED like I do.

Fronzizzle

Next, I tackled the headlights.

The first thing I did was purchase the upgraded wiring harness from eBay for $40; it uses relays to turn the lights on and off and eliminates a lot of known voltage issues. There are a bunch of threads about this on here so I won't rehash that, but I can provide the link to the harness if anyone is interested.

Next, I settled on LED bulbs. I ended up going with GTR Lighting, Generation 2 (the generation 1 kits have been discontinued). For the high beams, I just used some standard Sylvania Silverstar H4 bulbs.

For the housings, I wanted something special so I went with AAC Style sealed beams with built-in halos. One of the attached pictures shows what they look like when everything is off.

The housings are high quality, but each one hit on the existing headlight bucket. I used a saw to carefully make each hole in the bucket just a little bit bigger until I got all four of them to fit.

Attached are some pictures of the LED lights on during the day. I tried to snap some pictures at night, but my phone camera just doesn't cut it. I will say that I was a bit disappointed in the light they put out; despite looking really bright, the light only reflects about 10-15 feet in front of the car, then drops off quickly. I haven't decided if I'm going to keep the LED lights or not; I don't drive the car at night much at all, and when I do it's always in the city along well-lit roads but I'm used to getting more light out of my headlights.

Fronzizzle

Finally, I wired up the halos. Not sure how much use I'll get out of these...but I think they look awesome.

I bought a blue LED push button and mounted it below the normal headlight switch. I made sure to fuse everything and wired all four halos to the button.

The attached photos show the button and halos during the day; at night, they are incredibly bright. Would probably be great for car shows and that sort of thing.

In general, I'm happy with the way everything turned out. As I said above, not sure about the LED headlights yet but all in all, a good project.

Thornburg

Looks pretty great, I was wondering what else I could could do to my 85 IROC. The PO put the H4 in all (4) lamps but my highs will flash/shorts after just a few minutes of sitting in the driveway, so I don't use them. Do you know why that would happen? I really don't know electronics or wiring.

Fronzizzle

Check out this thread:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/elec...-question.html

I bought that harness; there are others on here that have experienced issues with the headlights as well. Apparently, all of the power goes through the headlight switch, which isn't good. This harness adds relays to take care of the problem.

Ron U.S.M.C.

Looks great.


I had limo tint that dark.
Could not see a dam thing.

DonW

Lookin Good Fronzizzle !!!!

DonW

Thornburg, Your headlight switch is not designed to run those kind of lights hence the flickering on and off. In fact the flickering just means your switch is doing its job. It has a built in overload protection and shuts down if it gets too hot.
You need this harness below. Dont let the harness scare you. I assure you it is a cinch to install in about 10 minutes. If you ordewr it though, make sure you tell them what it is you are installing it in. They will have to swap 2 pins around in the harness for you. This will fix your headlight issues...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/330974040114?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&rmvSB=true

Thornburg

Thanks for sharing the link on on how to check for the low beam / ground swap, looks like a good project for me to dig into. Looking closer at my lights, there is a small blue bullb under the H4 build but I never seen it do anything, I wonder if it makes a "Blue" tint...but it has never came on

sjorgens

I want to upgrade my tail lights to LEDs what were the specific LED lights you used and was there any need to buy additional wiring etc or load resistor kits? I purchased some of these a while back and just installed them:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-1157-BAY15D-WHITE-CREE-CANBUS-5-SMD-LED-STOP-TAIL-BRAKE-LIGHT-BULB-12V-24V-S-/191598828058?hash=item2c9c2e1a1a
however the turn signal is very slow now.

Any advice?

cheers mate

t/aws61985

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for the link. Just bought some Bulbs for all my interior lights.

vinny R

I had those in my old lights. there is a separate pig tail that needs to be connected to a switch and a power source. You could tap into the headlight wire also so they come on when the headlights do.

JdubRS

Do you have the original thermal turn signal flasher? They operate off of load, and leds draw less amps and create less heat which may be why it flashes so slow. It takes longer to build up the required heat load to cause the flasher to open. They make electronic ones which don't vary the flashing rate based on load. I wonder if that would work.

SG91camaro

i dont think it was posted but where did u purchase the headlights? they look great and i plan to put some in my fiber glass front end drag car for night time driving at dark tracks around where i live. i dont want kids running in front of me def not good.