LED taillights for Gen 1.0 (w/pics of housings now)

by **Nyyankees3511** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:14 pm

That sounds great..

by **woa_its_j3ff** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:21 pm

question about the L.E.D. tho, would anyone think it's weird if we put in the 2 circle L.E.D. shapes in the housing instead of the (( shape..
instead of: [((] make it like this: [o o] on each side?

by **Paladin06Greg** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:28 pm

No "O's" Please!!!!

woa_its_j3ff wrote:question about the L.E.D. tho, would anyone think it's weird if we put in the 2 circle L.E.D. shapes in the housing instead of the (( shape..
instead of: [((] make it like this: [o o] on each side?

by **woa_its_j3ff** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:29 pm

^ yessir. i just had it run thru my head. haha. just thought I'd ask.
actually you do have a point, if it lit up at night, itd kinda look like the eurotaillights we see on all those civics, cavs, and sunfires today.

by **made in china** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 11:42 pm

Well guys, I put in the parts orders just now.

Iill keep ya'll updated. I should have something to show ya'll within the next 4 weeks. Actually, I'll probably have some PCBs done in 2 weeks. I just need to find the time now that I am going back to work.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the final product will look good....

by **woa_its_j3ff** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:19 am

^can't wait to see what it looks like.

by **xcgames** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 5:07 pm

i thought bmw 6 series LED design is pretty clean, straight horizontal lines of LEDs.

by **SolaraBlue** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 5:25 pm

^^^ i was thinking the same thing earlier today. the solara tails are pretty much the same shape so perhaps this might be easier and look better then the g35's.

by **made in china** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 6:00 pm

To get anywhere near that appearance I would need to do CAD design, produce a injection molded reflector body and I would need to use flexible PCBs for that design. Also, I would need to break apart the tail light housing. But, that would look awesome....I just don't have the means to pull off that much engineering. Heck, I put over 30 hours into designing, calculating and finding the parts for my much simpler retro design :cry:

by **xavier** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 5:25 am

made in china wrote:To get anywhere near that appearance I would need to do CAD design, produce a injection molded reflector body and I would need to use flexible PCBs for that design. Also, I would need to break apart the tail light housing. But, that would look awesome....I just don't have the means to pull off that much engineering. Heck, I put over 30 hours into designing, calculating and finding the parts for my much simpler retro design

Have you thought about picking up a set of altezza's off of ebay? They may be easier to take apart. Then you could design everything to be very specific in the tail light. Just a thought. I've been toying with the idea of getting a pair of altezza's off of ebay and take em apart and putting trailer round brake light led things in em then smoke em a bit. Just to lazy right now.

by **SleeperSolara** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:57 am

Yeah the horizontial look, make me drool.
But can't wait to see teh end result.

by **ozone** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:25 am

You go man!

I am in the process of making a part for my MR2 Spyder to sell to others and it's a whole different ball game when you make stuff for others.

To do what I am doing I would just go to a junkyard and grab a window motor, cob up the stuff I want, make a little circuit and stick it in my car. Cheap and effective. But when I make the parts (wind deflectors) for others to buy, I have to use new motors and if the system breaks in my car I just find out what the problem was and fix it. If it breaks in other people's cars, they start trashing you on the forums and stuff. Plus when you call a company and say you want to buy 10 items, they don't give you special pricing. And this stuff consumes loads of your private time.

I admit that I'm not willing to pay the price for these lights, because I'm happy with the existing lights and they are not damaged, but I understand your pricing and I think the idea is really cool and unique. The look is very stock and I really like subtle mods like that. I like the kind of car people walk up to and go, "Man that Solara looks good. But what's different about it? I can't quite figure it out."

Good luck and keep up the awesome work!

by **woa_its_j3ff** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:22 am

man i'm so excited, I can't wait to see the final result. I think the 6 series taillights are by far the sweetest imo. *drool*

by **made in china** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:27 pm

ozone wrote:You go man!

I am in the process of making a part for my MR2 Spyder to sell to others and it's a whole different ball game when you make stuff for others.

To do what I am doing I would just go to a junkyard and grab a window motor, cob up the stuff I want, make a little circuit and stick it in my car. Cheap and effective. But when I make the parts (wind deflectors) for others to buy, I have to use new motors and if the system breaks in my car I just find out what the problem was and fix it. If it breaks in other people's cars, they start trashing you on the forums and stuff. Plus when you call a company and say you want to buy 10 items, they don't give you special pricing. And this stuff consumes loads of your private time.

I admit that I'm not willing to pay the price for these lights, because I'm happy with the existing lights and they are not damaged, but I understand your pricing and I think the idea is really cool and unique. The look is very stock and I really like subtle mods like that. I like the kind of car people walk up to and go, "Man that Solara looks good. But what's different about it? I can't quite figure it out."

Good luck and keep up the awesome work!

Thanks man. You and I think alike.

I am working on getting the price down....

I just picked up some OEM tails on eBay tonight. I am going to sacrifice one, really rip into it to make sure this whole LED project goes right. I put the PCB order on hold because I realized that so many 70ma LEDs running series/parallel needs main voltage regulation, unlike what you need with standard LEDs. And since I figured I would re-work the PCB a little bit, I have also decided to buy spare tails for sacrificial engineering. I am going to fine tune the design a bit since I have seen everyone's suggestions.

Anyway, can't wait to get my new tails in because I have 1,200 Agilent High Flux LEDs waitin' for a home....

by **SolaraBlue** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:17 am

do you have pix of the new design youre workin on?

LED taillights for Gen 1.0 (w/pics of housings now)

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