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

[made in china]

Hi guys, I just got back a complication in a prior surgery. Pythonjosh knows what happened to me before (head surgery) and I kinda took a step in the wrong direction friday. But, I'm back on track again.

I have the tail, LEDs, PCB and everything at home that I need to start on this project. Hope you guys don't mind, I found the ES300 cluster swap to be easier at this point. To clarify what I will be doing:

The strobe function will be activated by your emergancy flasher switch..at least this is my plans. basically the circuit will detect that both turns are on at the same time, and it will start flashing the red LEDs and the Yellow turn LEDs in high rate alternating patterns, just like what you see on emergency vehicles. Cool at car shows, get togethers, or really good safety feature if your car has a roadside service issue.

I don't really feel tooo comfortable making sequential flashing cicuits for the tails because I want to see what the LED clusters look like in the lens before we start putting motion into 'em. With the refractiveness of the outer lens and the possibly the shape of the LED PCB it may not look as cool as we might hope.

I have part of sunday to start this project up. Let me see if I can get some teaser pics up first.

I may have mentioned earlier that I need to integrate a power control circuit also so that the LEDs don't freak out during regular voltage changes in the car's electrical system. As I was researching LED conversions, some very creative people found that running high current LEDs in maximum series-parallel combinations were very sensitive to voltage fluctuations, so they needed to either incorporate DC regulation (not so difficult) or run less LEDs with larger resistors...which in turn run hotter, etc etc. So I have opted to incorporate DC regulation with strobe control. And yes, I will most DEFINITELY try out sequential flashing and leave that up to you guys as to whether or not it's cool to have.

Tryin' to get pics up later this sunday!

[pythonjosh]

Damn you had to go under the blade again huh. Sorry to hear that man.
That's a great idea about the strobes detecting that both flashers are simultaneous. I was wondering about how you'd pull that off without modifying the hazard circuit and/or running new wires.
Glad your brain is still functioning after all that surgery

[Nyyankees3511]

Sorry to hear that. Glad to hear your fine now.

[woa_its_j3ff]

glad to hear your alright man. thumbs up for a great project.

[Astro]

Man, glad to hear you're alright!

[made in china]

Dimmed shot:

Another dimmed shot:

Full power:

Full power wall shot:

Only 6 of 20 LEDs showing thru with my lazy arse:


Well, here are some quickies for ya'll. Interesting note for anyone addicted to eBay super bright LEDs....the LEDs on the side of the PCB are chinese made supposedly 10,000MCD units. They are so weak compared to the Agilent made 5,000 MCD 130 deg viewing angle Telux high flux LEDs. These LEDs are so freaking bright. When I started testing this PCB, I found one of these Telux LEDs was far brighter than 10 combined chinese made LEDs. And the Telux LEDs are bright up to 130 deg combined angle, 65 deg from directly above to the side. These chinese made ones are throwing like a 5 to 10 degree beam, and I ordered 60 degree beam. Even with the pinpoint beam, they are weaker....but, they are suitable for side illumination.

Anyways, I am totally shocked at how bright these LEDs are. I bought 1200 of them for our tails, I was planning on putting 55 orange-reds in each tail. In the last pic, you can see how bright it is when just 6 are showing thru the hole in the back of a stock lens. The whole thing lit up as bright as the stock one does with the 27watt bulb. I am pretty anxious to cut these housings open and get all 55 LEDs in here and see how bright they are.

FYI, these are DOT approved red-orange color, they are not red like the cheap ebay replacement modules. When done, these tails will light in the exact same color as approved by DOT, matching our LED CHMSL in the spoiler perfectly.

Also, I will be converting the turns to yellow LEDs. orange yellow LEDs are about 10X more expensive than straight yellow, but I'll keep scouring for a good deal on Telux style orange yellows.

[SolaraBlue]

sorry to hear you had to go into surgery. glad youre ok though!

the tails looks awesome! cant wait to get a set of them.

[made in china]

OK, this is probably all I can do for today before I end up on bad terms with the wife.

I managed to get the 20 + 4 LED PCB into my sacrificial housing. Next projects will be getting all 55 + 4 red LEDs (+4 refers to the side LEDs, you can see they fill out the tail assy nicely) and also get the 40 LED turn modules installed. Still unsure about the reverse, may leave it
incandescent. I know people are looking to not spend so much money to mod to LED tails, so I am trying to come up with cost effective solutions such as no white LED reverse, and I'd like to spread the PCB cost across all LED modules and my upcoming LED HVAC retrofit PCb into a one-time engineering cost for myself.

LMK what you guys think, remember I can't really get these LED tails to look exactly like the OEM ones, or some of the new Taiwan made ones for maximas, BMW and I30's because I can't develop free-form molded chromed plastic reflector nozzles like seen on the OEM ones. Our main benefits will be strobe, instant on, super bright LED intensity and a unique lens pattern.









I will be tripling the total number of red LEDs! So, no worries that these pics may seem to have a narrow LED pattern. Even at 20 LEDs, the taillight looks much better than OEM...these wide angle Telux LEDs really fill out the housing nicely.

[SolaraBlue]

looks awesome!

[woa_its_j3ff]

Looks great china, keep up the great work!!

[Astro]

Looking good so far!

[Nyyankees3511]

Looks great!!!!

[Sp33d]

how much again for a set of these? plug and play, correct? and will you need a converter because the led's wll take more energy?>

-mark

[QuickSEV6]

Looking great. I can hardly wait to see a finished product.
Well done.

[made in china]

how much again for a set of these? plug and play, correct? and will you need a converter because the led's wll take more energy?>

-mark

I am gonna offer a retrofit kit, and I will offer a full conversion service also. Pricing yet to be determined, but I am well aware that you can get LED tails for certain cars on eBay for about $200, so I am gonna do my best to keep prices in line with similar stuff. I need to work out the details and get a product up that people like, then I'll have a solid price.

As for needing a converter...there will be no converter exactly, there will be a control PCB that contains control circuitry for strobes and dimming. The LEDs actually draw much less power than your OEM stuff, so for the brake lights there will be a load simulator to simulate 27W total draw, same as stock, to prevent your check rear lights warning light from clicking on.