LED Tails. What do you think?

[Vinci]

I finally got my driver-side LED tail light all sealed up, so I wired it up and make a quick video. This one light took me a couple months to get together, but hopefully I'll be able to get the other one done a little more quickly.

Here's a little video CLIP, and a couple photos.

Here it is with the boards mounted, before I baked the the lens back on.


The lights came out pretty shiny with some plastic polish:

[98Z3]

in for a group buy there is a humungo difference between the leds and stock

[ken_vs_ryu]

a boston dude did led tails also...i wanted those and i want these.

[JCK]

I don't get it. In the video, it looks like your wiring is different from one side to another because different lights light up when you turn the car on, and when you hit the brakes.

[jameswbl]

looks good...very bright in the video

how much are we talking about?...tempted to do a coupe version...

[6i9]

I don't get it. In the video, it looks like your wiring is different from one side to another because different lights light up when you turn the car on, and when you hit the brakes.

Oh well, as long as he wires the other side the same way, theres no ill effects? I assume theyre all the same wattage in each section and most drivers wont know the difference anyway. As long as its consistent

Looks great Vinci, props on one of the first taillight light mods Ive seen so far

[krnz3]

thats hot

[JCK]

Oh well, as long as he wires the other side the same way, theres no ill effects? I assume theyre all the same wattage in each section and most drivers wont know the difference anyway. As long as its consistent

Looks great Vinci, props on one of the first taillight light mods Ive seen so far

I would have thought he would want to keep the original light sequence/pattern

[Vinci]

I don't get it. In the video, it looks like your wiring is different from one side to another because different lights light up when you turn the car on, and when you hit the brakes.

That is intentional. I never liked how the running lights were in the middle, so I moved them to the side, next to the small corner light (also LED). I moved the brake light to where the european fogs would be because I thought it would be a little more Porsche-ish. That, and the center reflector would not dissipate the LEDs at all.

There are no ill effects that I can think of, though the brake lights don't seem as bright as they ought to be in the video. The brake light LEDs are actually 2.5x brighter than the running lights.

The cool part about these is that with ALL the panels lit, they only pull 1/10th of the current that the turn signal would use on its own.

[MBENZF1]

is it just me ... cause i can't tell a damn thing from that video

[bmw5150]

Great work! Very bright and I really think the new pattern is a big improvement.

[98Z3]

is it just me ... cause i can't tell a damn thing from that video

left is stock, right is leds. watch how much brighter the leds are from stock

[Vinci]

Driver's side is LED, passenger side is stock.

[///MDex]

I want. Can't see the video till I get back home tonight.

[ken_vs_ryu]

Driver's side is LED, passenger side is stock.

is your car right hand drive?

[Vinci]

Do you guys not know what your tail lights look like?

In the photos, you see a driver's side tail light packed with LEDs, which is then seen in the video. The stock running light is in the center of the lens, whereas my LED tail light uses the outermost position (the brake position when OE) for the running light. When watching the video, the left side of the screen is the LED tail light, which is the driver's side.

[SexualChocolate]

Man that looks great! Keep up the excellent work!

Riaz

[MBENZF1]

other then it being brighter i can't tell a difference

[Vinci]

Ideally, they wouldn't look any different than OE, other than the bulb configuration and switching speed. Power consumption and longevity are just icing.

[bimmerZ5]

do they really look brighter??? i thought the brake lights were much dimmer than the stock halogens...

[Vinci]

The crappy video doesn't show it well, but the running lights and turn signal are at least as bright as the OE incandescents. The brake light seems a little more dim. I need to try it again with the engine running, as the power fed to the lights with the engine on an off differ by around 1.5v. When I designed the lights, I did so with a 13.5v source in mind, since that is the voltage I read with the engine running and the alternator at maximum output (~2500 RPM). I built a little safety margin into it so that nothing would be burnt out or stressed by voltages exeeding the battery's 12v.

[LynxZ3r0]

Uhm.. that's gorgeous... So yeah.. how much $$ we talking about for a project like this? I tried pricing LEDs and whatnot a couple years back and decided it would have been a little more expensive than I desired (then).

Wanna do 2 more?

[Vinci]

Thanks for the positive feedback. I had been wanting to make LED tail lights for quite some time and finally got the materials together to get started a couple months ago.

To somewhat answer peoples' question, these things are not cheap to make, and take forever. If I can find a place that can reproduce the boards in bulk, I can make more, but if I make them by hand, they take weeks. If anyone knows of such a business, send me a PM and I'll see what can be done.

[s0crates82]

Do you have an OBC? Does it throw a code?

[Vinci]

Do you have an OBC? Does it throw a code?

No codes. The flasher relay detects a drop in load, however, and causes the turn signal to flash too fast. That will go away when I get a load resistor wired in. The hazards must override the fast-flash fault state and let them flash normally though, as that is how I made the video.