Quote: Originally Posted by compuwiz1937 Don't waste your time and money. I tried it and the LEDs aren't near bright enough the ones I bought are!

Just curious, how do you get the mirror glass off?

I'm not real sure if theres a proper way to do it, but I just pulled mine. theres ridges on two posts or screws i guess.... then theres a metal T that clips in it.
Check it out:

So they just sort of snap into place?

yes! Although I learned today to be careful when doing that. I cracked one of mine today cause I smacked it back in too hard. Whoops.
Sorry to be hijacking your thread, but last thing is, check out my quasi-finished product, I think thats plenty bright!

How bright do the LED's look in the daylight, a bright sunny day to be specific?

That's pretty cool!
You should make a video of it flashing.
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I live in washington, the whole 'bright sunny day' thing might be a problem (lol)
but I'll try and take some better pics today after work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDofWIiA09U

Its the most horrid quality, sorry, I took it with my cell phone. And comments about my cars terrible appearance, today was the first time the car has been out of the garage since last October. Finally gettin her finished up!

That's pretty cool, you can see them!!
I wasn't sure how well they would light up the mirror housing.

Believe it or not, we had a nice day!

Here is a pic of the brake lights outside. I realize now that the pc board was crooked, but it's good enough

Very nice! Man, after I get my car back together i'll be giving you a call for pointers! This will be a must mod for me, hope you don't mind?
Good work, keep it up!

Sure, no problem!
That reminds me, I need to find that schematic of the wiring

Well I couldn't find the diagram that I first used when starting this type of stuff, but I found one similar.

Just ignore the resistor values, and my array used 5 LEDs per string instead of 4.

But this should give you an idea how to wire it up.

Looks real nice dude, good job!

Starting on the turn signal now.



I should be able to get these done pretty quick, and next I'll start on the wrap around portion of the tail light. that will be a little harder.

Very nice! What is your plan for mounting the LED board and how are you going to seal the rear of the lens housing? Are you going to gut the old rear housing and remove the reflectors?

going to mount the boards to the lens themselves maybe using epoxy.
Going to keep the reflectors and seal everything back up together again with the boards inside. I might put a bead of silicon into the groves of the reflector section before sealing it up, just for an extra sealing protection.

I've got some connectors that utilize the factory harness too. So I won't even have to cut any wires, just put them in the harness and then connect to the reflector section. Just like if it was stock. So no water should be able to get in that way either.

Once I'm at the point of putting it back together I'll have a better idea with it all.

Oh ya, can you guys vote me up on my cardomain page! Trying to get my rating up again, I swear it's stuck on 3 stars.

Man, these look amazing! Great job...def on my to do list. Hope you don't mind.

What size resistors did you use? I definitely want to do this when I get a chance. I'm not normally a fan of LED taillights, but your look better than any others I have seen. Where in the harness are you planning to connect to? Again, looks great, keep the updates coming.

I've been using 56ohm 1/2 watt resistors for the brake and rear turn LEDs. I can't remember what size LED I used to get me the dimmer tail function. I'll have to check later.

Use this calculator to help you design your circuits.
http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

I think for this project I used 14.8V or something around there to get my values.

For the rear lights, I bought these connectors that go right into the factory harness. I'm going to try and use those, so I don't have to cut any wires. I haven't tried them yet, but I'm hoping they work.
You can get them from autolumination

OK!
Here is the completed turn signal LEDs



Next is the curve around section of the tail light.

I still need to find some low cost white superflux style LEDs. Lumileds doesn't make them, and most of the ones I've been finding are way more in cost. I might have to do fewer white LEDs for reverse.

Got a pic, of the tails & turn lit together?

You might want to take a look at this site, looks like they have some good prices on LED's.

http://www.mouser.com/search/Refine....RefType=Header

They also have white LED's.

Here is a shot of the Turn and Brake lit


Here is another with Turn and Tail mode lit


and I've started on the wrap around section

looking good keep up the good work! then start mass producing them! im sure lots would buy it =D i would most likly!

If I can find a way to make these quicker, I will think about it!

I need to look into etching my own boards, so I dont have to solder in all the little jumpers that go between each LED. That takes forever!

Lol... In My electronics class we were soldering and de-soldering... And all we had to do was take a mother board de-solder everything and put it back on.... Now that was a PITA....


If i can find a way to make these for under like $75 im totally doing it.

all i can say is wow....Nice JOB! Very original

That's a very cool project. I'm an EE and I've thought about doing something like this as well, but figured that I wouldn't have the patience. I'm really tempted now, after seeing your results.

Keep up the good work man, and keep us posted.

Take care,

George

http://www.fullnet.com/~tomg/gooteepc.htm#1

Etching your own PCB's

wow man, thats looking slick!!!!!

Thanks, I've been reading various articles on doing this. I might have to give this a try one time, and see if it saves time or not. It sure would be more reliable having real traces that's for sure.

As coming from someone who hand assembles circuits for a living I'd say having a PCB would do little to save time. Perfboard is fine, put the LEDs in place, bend the legs over, solder together. Not sure how a PCB would cut down time when you consider the time it takes to etch them.

Mouser is NOT the place to go for LEDs, you need to go direct to the LED factories for when you're using this many if you're concerned about cost. I had a list of a good supplies but can't seem to find it. Check eBay, purchase small quantities, compare. For the most part I'd HOPE the MCD ratings are accurate and should give you an idea of how bright you'll get.

Overall I'd say that's an absolutely awesome job so far. I've always considered it but thought about how many hours of tedious soldering it'd be and quickly passed it up. If I can find the supplier of the white LEDs I have here I'll post up, I wired my whole interior with them with excellent results.

how is the wraparound coming?

I haven't had any time to work on it anymore

The last I worked on it, I got one PCB cut, and some LEDs soldered into place.

Hopefully I get some time next week to do some more

Nice project you got going there, I was thinking about doing the same thing by myself I was hoping to be the first to late for that :P

Just curious where in washington are ya?

Dang thats Banging. Thats one of the coolest mods I've seen in a great while.

just ran across this article, excellent work! I started in a similiar way but used the wrong led's at the time. so now i'll probably end up buying those and redoing it... great work can't wait to see a finished tail...

Definatly sweet looking, GTAs would be easier, since there is no wrap-around portion. Guess this will have to go on the 'someday' list, as right now all the lights work, and there are pleanty of other things that do not.

Keep on going, it looks like it would be a great retrofit.

Thank You everyone!

I'm really hoping I get some time to get back on this soon. I really want to see how the wrap around section looks lit up!!

Wait so what exactly do you have to use to get it to dim when in tail light mode? This mod sounds right up my ally and I could use my schools engineering labs to complete it but I just want to understand how everything works first.

There are a couple ways to do it, the more advance way is to use a PWM.

Or the really easy way like I did, and use an additional resistor on the tail light line and a couple diodes.

See this example, but ignore the resistor values.

I like it too, but don't wanna give up my STS tail lights. It would be cool thought, if I could keep my STS, and make the ?50? (just picked a number)of LED columns, and make them light in sequence. I could always just wire the LEDs in 3 groups per side, and sequence the 3 groups like that.

cdoyle beat me to it

Very nice job...looks professional.

Well, if you were up to it, with those ?50? columns, you could make the STS much smoother. That would probably be a lot of work, but definatly worth it when you were done.

Ill buy one of those!

oh wow I was just being dumb I guess. A resister in the taillight wire would work good and makes perfect sense. It would be sweet to do the sequential lights with different brightnesses on each, but that would be difficult considering that I am pretty sure that the LED's brightness doesn't change linearly with the voltage applied...so that would take wayyyyy to much trial and error to get the brightness to change evenly between each

With a slow enough flasher relay, and one STS per 3 columns, I could sequence them column by column.

To much for me too wanna mess with, besides not having enough STS modules, in their current build. I doubt I have enough left for the columns, 2 by 2!

How many LED columns did it take, minus the wrap around for Camaro turn lights?

Finally I have an update!!!

Got 1 section of the wrap around done.



I'm hoping that maybe on Friday, I'll get some more progress done on this!!