LED tail conversion - preliminary discussion and idea thread

[gli liphon]

I've ordered a bunch of red LEDs and I'm planning on coming up with a good design for a tail retrofit. I know Brandon has talked about doing this too, but I know he's still doing headlights, so I'm going to take a crack at it in the interim. As I've stated in the title, I'm trying to get some ideas and what people would like to do if we could come up with a decent production method.

I'm going to try and detail out a few ideas, feedback and additional ideas would be great. I'm going to need to pick up a taillight or two that I can experiment with, so if anyone has access to a junkyard or can find me a used one on the cheap, let me know ASAP.

I've got 3 ideas running right now:

Large ring: BrakeSmall ring: turnWhite circle: reverse

Large ring: brakeRectangle: turnWhite circle: reverse

Large ring: BrakeSmall ring: turnWhite circle: reverse

So a few things to note, I'm trying to keep things close to existing holes/connections to not make this overly complex. I'm also not really worried about changing the housing color or anything like that. I'll need to actually get one and see how hard it is to change some of that or make it dramatically different. I'm also not sure how each led is going to mount, where its going to go in the housing, if we can reuse existing parts of the reflector assemblies, etc etc etc. For right now the sky is the limit, give me some feedback and new ideas.

[Shift_Altima]

#2 is pretty much the 2007 g35 coupe look. very sexy. go with 2.

[bina12834]

combine #1 and #2....

make the inside circle the turn signal, the outside circle the brake, and the rectangle be the light that comes on and stays on when you turn your headlights on (when not hitting the break). so basically what #2 looks like would be if you were driving at night and you hit the break.....now if you were driving at night and werent on the break, there would be no circles....only the rectangle

[kuhan]

#2 is nice, but it is too similar to g35 style. I'll still go with #2

[bina12834]

Or combine 1 and 2 and make the rectangle the turn signal, the outside ring the night time "marker" light and the inside circle the brake light.....kind of like Acura RL tail lights

Modified by bina12834 at 5:52 PM 1/7/2009
Modified by bina12834 at 5:55 PM 1/7/2009

[ItsEcko06]

as i have been reading on super bright LEDs.com about dual intensity leds, i was wondering if you will b putting those in.

if so i would say do an inner and outer ring which both light up like parking lights or when your headlights are on at night, but when you hit the brakes the outter ring lights up, and when you use the turn signals the inner ring lights up.

i would still like to see the original blinker position used so maybe you could throw leds in there for blinkers and use the 2 rings for brakes.

i think the reverse light position is fine where its at.

[dangeris]

I've been toying around with this idea myself. Brandon's price for just the LED boards are way too expensive. I know it can be done for cheaper. Coming up with a design is easy. The problem is cracking the tail light assembly open. If they're like anything like the headlights this will be a PITA to tackle.

[coderedk]

combine all three

[JayStarr]

Combine 1 and 2

[xfactor0707]

Combine 1 and 2

[alt.coupe28]

1 and 2

[dglove.bluecoupe]

definitely 1&2

[gli liphon]

Here's a sample combo of 1&2



I definitely like this idea and I'll just need to take some time to get the spacing and count right. I'm thinking that the two circles should be offset like how I have in the pic, but obviously pretty exact. I can't figure out what to do with the sidebar either, I like the idea, but I need to find a pattern that looks functional without being "OMGHEYLEDSHERE". You know? I like the idea of having it just as the running light, I was toying with the idea of doing something like that across the bottom of the light or something. Thanks for all the input so far, can someone come up with how the hell to do the rectangle so it looks good?

dangeris - The price factor is why I want to do this. My hope is to get a set of tails to experiment with and hopefully find a simple way to open them up. Then find a way to make these lights as easy mods to install that still look good. So the ultimate goal: make a DIY to open your tails and install a pre-wired LED light that anyone can put in with minimal modification. I don't know if all of these factors will end up working out, but if we can come up with a decent way to do it DIY, I'd like to offer plug and play LED kits at cost. So that's my whole thought process, no idea if it'll work, but its winter, I'm bored, and I'm so OCD about my AC right now I need to do SOMETHING.

[gli liphon]

as i have been reading on super bright LEDs.com about dual intensity leds, i was wondering if you will b putting those in.

if so i would say do an inner and outer ring which both light up like parking lights or when your headlights are on at night, but when you hit the brakes the outter ring lights up, and when you use the turn signals the inner ring lights up.

i would still like to see the original blinker position used so maybe you could throw leds in there for blinkers and use the 2 rings for brakes.

i think the reverse light position is fine where its at.

I've been thinking about the dual intensity thing as well. My current guess is that the LEDs aren't anything special, its all in the wiring and resistance. I'm no expert on this stuff, but here's my thought. Since 3157 bulbs have two contacts, you just need to make two different types of circuits when connecting to 1 set of leds. So whatever circuit makes the running light come on, you have that set up with higher resistance so the LEDs come on dim, when the other circuit is activated you have a lower resistance path to the same LEDs which makes them bright. Is this definitely the way it works? I have no idea, but I haven't seen any specific LEDs that actually have two diodes in them (besides RGB ones) so the only other way to make the same LED bright or dim using the same voltage would be to change the resistance.

I'm definitely no electrical engineer (paging surmanm!) so I could be totally wrong here. I ordered a bunch of LEDs and resistors off ebay today, so I'll start experimenting and trying to figure it out once they show up. See OCD + winter comment above.

[legend_217]

[QUOTE=gli liphon]Here's a sample combo of 1&2



For the signal light, can you make like 3 LED strips but not 2.

[gli liphon]

For the signal light, can you make like 3 LED strips but not 2.

Definitely, I just got lazy about making the extra dots and getting them lined up. If everyone is good with this design, I'll get some actual measurements and try and come up with some designs that are actually to scale.

And just to be clear (if my detail blah blah blah above wasn't enough indication) I'm crazy retentive about aesthetics so we aren't talking about just slapping some leds on a board and we are good to go. I really like the indented look on g35 tails that outline each led so I want to do something like that, or find a good way to mount each led in its own housing kind of like how Brandon does on the headlights. Something like the top one here.

Anyway, keep the ideas coming! Thanks!

[legend_217]

One more question, How do you use turn signals after you replace them with LED strips ?

[Rob.Vegan]

I like number one

and like bina said, use the rectangle as a running light type thing

[bina12834]

outside ring = running lightinside light = brake lightrectangle(3 colums of LED's) = turn signal

thats how i would want it....if anyone can picture the 05-08 Acura RL LED tail lights(i cant find any pics of the RL tail lights illuminated)....like those for the brake/running lights

[gli liphon]

This is my first draft of a to-scale model of what we've been talking about. This image isn't to scale since our tails are big, but all the proportions are correct as far as the size of each light housing and using 5mm led's. I'm not sure about the led spacing on the rectangle section, I kind of like it, but it might be better to actually match the spacing on the outer ring.



So I really like the spacing on the circle because its kind of VW-ish, but since I really like how theirs looks, it makes sense they'd end up like this. We could definitely keep it simple and stop here and have it wired up so you could chose your own combination of running light, light when headlights are on, brake light, and turn signal. I think it might look really cool to do a small circle (reverse size or smaller) way left of center and do that as the turn. It could either be another ring of led's, or a block of leds that lights a reflector so its just solid color.

So based on this, what do you think? More leds? Less? I'm not looking to do an exact copy of a vw light or a g35 light, but use several of those designs to create a unique light. You don't want your a** to look like every other AC out there, right??

[ItsEcko06]

I've been thinking about the dual intensity thing as well. My current guess is that the LEDs aren't anything special, its all in the wiring and resistance. I'm no expert on this stuff, but here's my thought. Since 3157 bulbs have two contacts, you just need to make two different types of circuits when connecting to 1 set of leds. So whatever circuit makes the running light come on, you have that set up with higher resistance so the LEDs come on dim, when the other circuit is activated you have a lower resistance path to the same LEDs which makes them bright. Is this definitely the way it works? I have no idea, but I haven't seen any specific LEDs that actually have two diodes in them (besides RGB ones) so the only other way to make the same LED bright or dim using the same voltage would be to change the resistance.

I'm definitely no electrical engineer (paging surmanm!) so I could be totally wrong here. I ordered a bunch of LEDs and resistors off ebay today, so I'll start experimenting and trying to figure it out once they show up. See OCD + winter comment above.

i'm no engineer either but i'm sure u don't need 2 diodes in a single LED it just depends on the power or resistance u send to it. i mean i see those strips they put on trucks all the time where they dim and brighten when they hit the brakes. i was just wondering but i've seen some LED tails that probably had crappy bulbs that didn't light up much brighter than it look when they were dim so i could barely tell when they were braking.

your design above looks pretty good though.

[gli liphon]

Here's the latest version



Now I'm not normally one for the led's in the middle, but it got me thinking. What about going in from the back of the light instead of trying to get the cover off? I need to take out one of my tails this weekend to look, but I'm thinking I could just cut the back of the brake light enclosure off and make a new one to fit on there. So you wouldn't actually see those center LEDs since they would be behind the existing reflector that's there. So in this example, the inner circles are wired to parking, the larger circle is brake, rectangle is turn. I'm thinking that this could easily be wired up a bunch of different ways and different combinations so everyone could have it exactly how they would want it.



So that's my thought now, just cut the back off the brake and the turn, make up some new reflectors with the LEDs built in and seal it back up. What do you guys think?

[bina12834]

Here's the latest version



Now I'm not normally one for the led's in the middle, but it got me thinking. What about going in from the back of the light instead of trying to get the cover off? I need to take out one of my tails this weekend to look, but I'm thinking I could just cut the back of the brake light enclosure off and make a new one to fit on there. So you wouldn't actually see those center LEDs since they would be behind the existing reflector that's there. So in this example, the inner circles are wired to parking, the larger circle is brake, rectangle is turn. I'm thinking that this could easily be wired up a bunch of different ways and different combinations so everyone could have it exactly how they would want it.



So that's my thought now, just cut the back off the brake and the turn, make up some new reflectors with the LEDs built in and seal it back up. What do you guys think?

i still think outside LED ring should be the running light and the inside ring should be the brake light. i just think it would look funny to drive down the road to see these little LED circles as the running lights.

[gli liphon]

Yeah, I get what you are saying. I'm not even sure how bright those ones in the middle would be, but if it was a cluster and could be really bright, that'd be awesome to have the outside ring lit and then the whole middle lights up with the brake. Maybe even take the outer rim from the dim setting to full intensity as well. Thanks for your input, I think this is going to turn out pretty bada**.

[bina12834]

yea...its going to look really nice....now to just do it for us sedanners as well

[gli liphon]

yea...its going to look really nice....now to just do it for us sedanners as well

I'm hoping if I can figure out a good way to do the insert, we can definitely do it for sedans too.

[Alien_Tracker]

I def. like your latest setup the best.

[brandonbeeb]

hey guys i know my post got deleted before because of a price i posted but ill see if i can post up some pictures of my led tail lights just so you guys can get an idea of how to do it. i think were going to do a forsale on them after the headlight groupbuy. just for you guys trying to do them yourself you cant take them apart as there sealed by sound waves and the only way to get at the coupe ones is to cut them. the sedan lights are another story

[gli liphon]

hey guys i know my post got deleted before because of a price i posted but ill see if i can post up some pictures of my led tail lights just so you guys can get an idea of how to do it. i think were going to do a forsale on them after the headlight groupbuy. just for you guys trying to do them yourself you cant take them apart as there sealed by sound waves and the only way to get at the coupe ones is to cut them. the sedan lights are another story

Brandon, I'd definitely welcome any advice, ideas and tips you have since you've done a set of these already. Please don't think this is about price or trying to take business away from you. As I said in my OP, I know you are still busy with the headlights and I've just wanted to do something to fill the winter months. I've been wanting to take a crack at wiring leds for other projects around my house as well as learning how to do small scale prototyping (read: huge nerd), so this seemed like a good project.

[gli liphon]

I pulled my drivers side tail last night and as Brandon mentions above, it looks like the best way to do this will be to cut the back of the housing. So here's some pics of that, I'm thinking of just cutting out the whole back housing. That'd give around 6" to make a new reflector and led housing. I'm happy about the depth too, its over 1.5". I hadn't considered making a cone or dome shaped reflector, but there is definitely room.





I made my first clay prototype last night as well and i'm really happy with how it turned out. This was more of a test to see how close I could do each led housing and how much shrinkage (there were far too many shrinkage jokes in my house last night ) after baking the clay. This is a very very rough prototype, so don't worry about edges, the shape or the fact that the reflectors aren't perfectly symmetrical yet. The final piece will actually be plastic, contoured to increase reflectivity, and chromed. I will probably also do individual rings so I can get the rings really close together. Anyway, I guess this is less of a prototype and more of a proof of concept.



Let me know what you think. I'm hoping to do some more refined samples this weekend and actually get some made in plastic to see how they look primed and painted.