There isn't any more room in there for them, I wanted to fill the entire lens but just couldn't squeeze anymore in there.

I need to have a place for all the resistors, and also for the diodes.

I also wanted to keep all my arrays with equal amount of LEDs, I have heard that when you start mis matching number of LEDs per array, it could cause difference in brightness between them. The calculators might say they are the same current rating, but sometimes they round up/down to the closes available resistor.

 

Double layer of boards then? One for bulbs, one for the other parts?

Or, overlapping the edges of the openings with the 4 corner bulbs?

As built, I give it a 9 outta a 10!

 

Still waiting for the white LEDs to get here for the reverse lights, sure hoping they get here before the holiday weekend.

Worked some more on the other parking light, about have it done.

test shot with both on.

 

No disrespect, but wow!! thats a rough looking camaro. I assume that you are going to be bringing the rest of the car up to the led light standards of coolness??

 

The car overall is in really good shape.

It's an 84, and I wanted to add GFX to it, so got an 85+ bumper cover for it.
Once I pic a color for the car, it will look nice again.
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The interior is already done.
Just need the 4th gen seats, and start on the audio system.

 

Is that an 84 Dash Cluster? Whats that Speedo go up to?

 

No it's a 92 RS dash and cluster, put that in last summer.

I think it only goes up to 110, I can't remember. Haven't really drove the car in about 2 years (lol)

Check out my car domain page, and you can see all the stuff I'm doing. There is a thread on here somewhere too.

The next project I'm starting on is converting the cluster to LEDs. I have a cool idea, but need to find a way to make new gauge faces. The yellow writing makes it so you can't change the color

Didn't there used to be scans on this site of the 91/92 style gauges?

 

cdoyle- Very impressive job on the project. I was beind a G35 the other day and said to myself that I would look into making LED tails for the IROC this winter. This thread has been very informative and I can't wait to start.

 

are you gonna round off the parking lamps a little bit? right now it kind of seems like I should be seeing a message scroll across them, heh

though if you rig that up, that might come in handy

 

Another thought...This idea just occurred to me...
LEDs on on one side and the other parts on the other side of the breadboard. I work with double sided multilayer boards all the time.

 

It would have to be V.2 if I wanted to add spread them out. It's a good idea about the double boards. Just didn't think of doing that, there is room in there to do that.

If anyone else wants to give it a try, please post the results!

 

Wow man... That is really shaping up! I was alittle skeptical when you first started this thread, because many threads like this start out cool, but then die. Youve kept working, and I really think when you are done its going to look sharp.

SO much in fact, that I might have to follow your footsteps and do my TA. Im thinkin since the tail lights arent sectioned off like the camaro, the options are limitless on how you can make the brake light work. The entire light will be "driving light". And you can make whatever part you want brake light. If you want the bottom half, top half, stock 2/3s...whatever.

And the other lights on the car will be cake... Now that I have some spare stuff laying around, I might start playing!

Keep it up! I cant wait to see the tail light mounted and functioning! You should mount a stocker and your modded one for comparison. Should look fantastic!

J.

 

Thanks glad you like it!!

I do plan on doing a video with the stock on one side, and the LED on the other and showing all the different functions etc. Should look pretty cool! Hopefully I could do that this weekend, if the white LEDs get here

If you do your TA's lights, makes sure to post pics!

 

Well... Im building a couple jeep axles for my buddy. After that though, I wont have any projects until spring. Looking to stay out of the cold this winter. haha.

Soooo...Ill have plenty of free time to mess around with some light options! Im also building some retrofit HIDs for my TA....which hasnt been done yet as far as I know. Using FX-35 projectors... The LED upgrade would go right along with the front lighting upgrade!

And Im a pic ***** so Ill definetly post em when I get em... Ill probably take a while...because Ide like to try to do my own boards. I hate soldering jumpers and all that...drives me crazy.

J.

 

Ya the jumpers do start to get on your nerves after awhile (lol)

The HID projector retro is on my to do list, but just haven't bit the bullet to buy everything. Since the car really isn't drivable yet, I've been putting that off. Can't wait to see how yours turn out, I think a retro like that would look great on our cars, and the light output will be a great improvement

 

****IN ****....sorry about the language but dude, you just made my day. This is the ultimate mod for the IROC. Really wish there was a price set from YOU (The Maker) as to how much you wouldnt mind copying these for?

Keep us updated.

 

I'm curious to see the other side of the pc board, as well as a picture of how you mount them.

 

The white 100ma's came today

I'm going to try and get the reverse light done this weekend, and then I'll take pics of the back of the boards, and also pics of them mounted within the lens.

 

cdoyle: Hope you dont mind... I whipped up something in photoshop just fooling around... I think you could get 3 LEDs in each little square in the grid. Reverse could just be straight rows.

This pic would be lights on, brakes applied, and in reverse. Its not my car (hope owner doesnt mind) and the pic wasnt hi res enough to do a good photoshop job.



I cant wait to see how your reverse lights turn out... This might sound dumb, but I have a scale RC rock crawler. And I used some of those LEDs for "rock lights". I forget what MCD they were...but you cant look at em when they are lit. And they light the ground up like crazy. Should look good for the lights!!

J.

 

Wow, that looks really cool. Can't wait to see how it looks in real life!!!

ya these white ones are bright! I hooked a couple up, just to see, and you don't want to look right at them

 

Darn it, I ran out of solder!!

But I got 5 rows of the white done today.
I like these white leds, but you can tell the quality control isn't the same as the others. I've had 3 now, that were more yellow/green compared to the rest. Sucks have to unsolder them and get a replacement, especially when your scrapping the floor for unused solder (lol)

I've decided to only do 4 LEDs per array with these, because
1. They 100ma so to run them close to that you would need a 1 watt resistor for each, and I didn't want to do that.
2. They cost way more compared to the other LEDs.

The pic has a lot of glare, it doesn't look that bright in real life but it does look nice.

 

I think they look great so far. I wish you would make more of these (I would buy them because I don't have the time right now to do them). How much do you have in them all together (as of now)?

 

Great job, really impressive. As for the people who want to buy them, how much is his time worth? If there is $200 in parts, and you said he should charge say $10 an hour for time, how many hours are in these? Who would pay $1000+ for taillights? Better off to have a go at it yourselves IMHO. I can't wait to see them on the car.

 

Maybe just a "parts list" & layout diagram then? So others can build them.

 

Ya, I would love to make these for everyone but the time involved would make them cost $1000 for the pair. I doubt anyone would pay me that (if you would, let me know

I'll have to count up all the LEDs that I have in there, because I got such a good deal on the red/orange ones I put alot in there. If I had to pay the .35 each they cost normally, I wouldn't have put that many in there.

The quickar Oranges ones are .10 each, get them while you can they are closing them out. 70ma 120 viewing angle.


the white ones were the most expensive part of this project. I think it was 59.99 for 100 of them

I'll post more pics when I'm all done, and then you should be able to build these yourself. If you use the LED calculator I posted earlier, it will help you get the resistor values you need.

 

I found Red/Orange Superflux ones for $12/tube ($0.20 ea) so I think my project will be starting soon.

 

Care to tell us where? My friend wants me to do this for him too, I think he would be very happy to know where he can get them cheaper than the previos prices we found.

 

people can say what they want about stuffing "one more" LED here or there in your assemblies, but go look at the factory setups, even with bulb taillights. the factories make huge lenses with sometimes MUCH smaller actual lights. it's obvious from the quality of your work that if you have an open space in a lens, it's cause another LED simply won't go there. the job you have done looks fabulous. very professional.

the only question i have for you is what diode are you using on the input leads?

 

Sure, if anyone wants his contact info, PM me. I don't know if he wants his info on the boards. He sells PWM drivers and LEDs on ebay but offers them for sale direct without auction.

cdoyle- For your brake/marker lights, are you using 40 sets of 4-series strings? Are you using any sort of voltage regulation for the LEDs? I'm trying to see if I can use PWM with mine.

 

I actually went with 5 series strings with mine, so 10 across.

I'm not using a voltage regulator with it, when I entered my info into the LED calculator I put down 15V as my source. That should take care of any spikes etc. That's what I did on my 4Runner and they've been working great for about a year and a half now.

I know many on HIDPlanet look down on doing that, and prefer a voltage regulator and PWM for 'dimming', but I like to keep things as simple as possible.

But with a voltage regulator, you do have the benefit of a constant voltage for your LEDs. So at idle you'll have the same voltage compared to full throttle. So the LEDs won't dim or get brighter depending on how fast the car is revving.

I wasn't too worried about that, and don't think it will be a problem. Never noticed anything like that happening on the 4Runner.

 

I knew some of you have been waiting to see the side by side comparison, so today I hurried and got the reverse lights done, and threw it on the car. This is not the best example, but I was running out of time. The boards are just taped in right now, and I didn't get them centered right either, didn't notice it until after I was ready to take the movie, and I didn't want to mess with it anymore sense it was getting dark.
My camera isn't taking very good movies either it's kind of blurry, but you get the idea.

Stock is on the drivers side, and the LED is on the passenger side.

I like how the brake lights are instant on when you step on the brake, and the turn signals turned out pretty nice too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVhMUSA-liY

 

(thought) you might want to darken the wight LED's bye spraying it with clear coat and black paint mixture...becouse at night that would death to the eyes

 

Wow, those reverse lights are bright. Is it just the camera, or are the LED brake lights actually dimmer than stock?

I agree, I like the instant on of LEDs a lot.

 

Na, I want them to be bright and light up anything behind me. Any type of coating would dim it way too much, and make it not worth doing the conversion.

The glare is mostly from the camera, it's just not made for taking video like that.
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It's the camera, and also because I didn't have the LEDs lined up right behind the little 'squares' in our lens. They were sorta in between them, and it was causing the light to diffuse.

Even with them not lined up right, they are much brighter then stock the camera just doesn't show it very well.

I'll take another vid once I have them permanently installed in the housing and it should look better.

 

That's what I assumed but I wanted to make sure before I order my stuff to build these. Lookin really good man

 

Thanks, the vid also doesn't show how the LEDs have a nice uniform color across the lens too.

Compared to the stock with the bright hotspot in the middle.

 

wow, I havent checked this thread in while, looks like you made alot of progress. Those lights look amazing, I'd love to have TA leds like that, but I dont have your kind of skill or time or patience. I definitely want led revese lights at LEAST, my normal ones are pathetic compared to those.

 

Hey do you have a pic of the back of the boards? i'm kinda curious on how they look if you don't mind

 

I haven't taken any yet, I will before I seal them up. Just haven't had any time to work on it at all since last weekend.

 

update?

 

AMAZING project, looks fantastic!

Great job man, Keep us updated!

 

Thanks!

Haven't really worked on it much since the last post, it's been too cold out and just haven't wanted to go out there to solder.

But I did get a new solder station, and now just dying to use it. So maybe in the next week I'll start on the drivers side

 

hey
they are looking good, maybe its a trucker thing but i love the LEDs, anyway i was wondering if you ever figured out how you were doing your front side markers, i remember you and i talking about it 3 months back or so and you were having trouble getting the side markers to come apart so you could put a board in them

also what are you doing for tag lights?

 

Yes, the factory side markers do not come apart, I tried the oven method and nothing, I actually left them in too long and warped it.

So the only way to get inside those is to cut them open.

I'm actually going to get some of those clear side markers, and see if they open up any easier. I like those better anyways

The rear plate marker I have feeling will be the same, will not want to open easily. I think what I might just do with those, is use 1 of the 5 chip LEDs and put them into one of the empty 194 bases. It will be basically a plug/play led for it.

I think 1 on each side will be more then plenty to light the license plate up.

 

i had single LED tag lights that did the job, but they were cheap and went out, looking to get a 5 LED plug and play, but they should work, keep us posted on the front side markers, you going to do like we talked about and make them flash brighter when the turn signals are on just like the front ones or you going stright side markers

 

Ya they are going to work just like the front turns, less bright in normal mode and brighter when the turn is on.

should look pretty cool Just need to get one open!

 

Lol set it up on the dinning room table

 

lol funny you should mention that.

I didn't want to sit out on the garage floor so I setup the solder station on my desk and got 6 rows of the first brake section done for the drivers side

 

Lol up next the engine stand will be in the living room so you can sit on the couch and work... Im trying to be able to do that in my house but... unortuently looks like the family isn't allowing that.

 

you getting anywhere on the second one yet cdoyle? I saw another thread kinda like this except it is for led sequential lights. http://www.camarosource.ca/forums/vi...130059#p130059

not sure if it will happen. it is for a group purchase from somewhere.