This page should answer your questions about any of my LED mods on the exterior of my car.

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Project Completed in April 2006 (For Sale )

By now, all of my taillights were drop in LED bulbs, except for my third brake light. So I decided to replace the entire bulb with an LED panel. 

I bought two squares of 36 red LEDs from superbrightleds.com , and then cut them in half (since the panels are symmetrical). The final shape was 3 LEDs high, and 24 LEDs wide for a total of 72 LEDs.  I painted the front of the LED panels silver, and the entire brake light housing silver.

 

I wired everything together, and then Epoxied the panels together using clothes hanger pieces. Then I simply Epoxied the panel to the brake light and ran the wires to where I cut off the existing socket.  The LED boards already had all of the resistors and everything wired in, so it was very simple to just wire the boards together.

 

The light fit perfectly!  I didn't like the silver, so I eventually painted it all black.  Now, I no longer needed the ugly red cover! Now it is all clear.

 

Nice and bright.

 

Here it is shining on a ceiling, you can see that the beam of light is not very wide. I sacrificed viewing angle for brightness. Since the LEDs are focused to a 15 degree viewing angle, they are really bright.  It is blinding to the car behind me!

 

This is what it looks like with the cover on.

 

Lit up, but not as even due to the checkerboard pattern on the lens.

 

The cover spreads the light out a bunch wider.

 

Finished!  Notice how poorly the taillight brake lights are lit by those drop in LED bulbs.

 

Project Completed in July-August 2006 (For Sale )

I chose these mirrors because they had the largest mirrors of any aftermarket mirrors.  They were almost as big as stock, but they were harder to see out of.

First, I took the 4 LED lenses off and then threw away all of the existing LEDs.  Here is a pic showing how I used a screwdriver to force the lenses off (sorry for all the salt, darn winter!!  This picture was taken much later after I finished.)  There is a screw inside the mirror holding the lights on but I couldn't get to it.  The plastic lens is not that strong, so the screw strips out.  Once you do this, however, you will not be able to screw it back in, so mine are held in with caulk.  Be careful not to dent the mirror plastic by wedging the screwdriver into the light from the bottom (the pic show from the top, oops).   It pops out, and then you have to cut the wires.  The LEDs are held into the lens with glue, so I used my Dremel to cut around the circuit board, and it fell out.

 

There were only 5 LEDs in each lens before, and that is why the light was very spotty.  The old LEDs were standard 5mm ones with two wires and a rounded end, but I wanted some LEDs that were brighter and had a wider viewing angle. 

 

I bought some white "super flux" LEDs with 4 wires off Ebay .  They were pretty cheap, but they were better than any LEDs I had bought before.  They were a beautiful blue-white, they were very bright, and the viewing angle was very wide.   Plus, they came with free 470 ohm resistors for each LED to work in 12 volts.

 

After getting rid of the old electronics, I decided to have 9 LEDs in each lens instead of only 5 so that the light would look more uniform.

I poked the LEDs through a cardboard cereal box that I painted chrome on one side.  Then, I wrapped the resistor wires around the positive sides of the LEDs, connected those all together, and then connected all of the grounds together with a single wire.  I recommend using real circuit boards like I do now.

 

I Epoxied over the entire back of them to make sure they never, ever broke (so far so good).  What sucked was that when I did this, one of the four LED sections got shorted out, so I had to make another one.  It is a good thing I had just enough extra LEDs!  I then caulked over the entire back to make it water proof, and then stuck it back in the hole in the mirror.  The caulk held the lenses in place.

 

I also painted the mirrors black with a clear coat during this project since the original finish had been lost.

 

They are much brighter than before, the new LEDs fill out the lens, and the color is the perfect white with a hint of blue.

 

The LEDs are much wider-angled so now the light can be seen from the side a little better than before.

 

Project Completed in July-November 2006 (Sold)

I tried enough of the drop-in LED bulbs to know that the only way I would be happy was if I made my own LED tail lights.  After considering my options, I decided to go with the APC tail lights.  I had the old aftermarket taillights still on my car already but I did not like them anymore.  I realized how ricey they were and they did not match the clean style of the car.  The APC ones, however, were perfect.  They were simple and clean only having two red circles with a bar underneath for the turn signal and back up light.  I even drove around with the APC ones for a while without being disappointed except that they leaked like crazy.

I had several goals for this project.  The most obvious one was to have LEDs for the brake lights, running lights, and turn signals.  Snce I could do whatever I wanted with them, I wanted to make sure that I would not regret anything.  Here were my goals:

1)  To have red light visible from the side of the car.  The problem was that they did not come with any red light out of the sides.  To be safe, I needed to be seen from the side.

2)  To have separate running lights and brake lights, like most Volvos and older BMWs.  This way, at night, instead of the red lights simply getting brighter to show braking (like the stock Corollas do), I wanted the brake light to be either full brightness or off.  This way, the brake light has more contrast, and is more obvious/visible, and is safer.  Also, this is a lot easier to wire up!

3)  I wanted my brake lights to match my third brake light.  After my third brake light mod, which was rectangular in shape, circle brake lights in my taillights did not look good.  I wanted to have one rectangle on each side for a brake light, and the APC taillights had a nice space for it: where the turn signal originally was.

4)  I wanted circular rings of LEDs for my running/parking light.  These taillights were perfect for that, since they had two identical circles on each side.

5)  I wanted white turn signals that were original, so I put them inside the red running light rings.  Never seen that before!

6)  I wanted the lights to have no red in them.  LEDs make that easy.

7)  I wanted the red running light circles to be located at the top of the taillights, not the bottom.  On all stock 7th gen Corollas, the red lights are underneath the turn signals.  But I did not like how low this made it look, since the taillights are very low on the car to begin with.  I always thought that the red lights should have been on the top to make the taillights look higher off the ground at night, and so that is what I did.  I must say that I was right, and it looks much better with the taillights appearing higher up on the back of the car.  If that makes any sense at all.

First, I tried to take off the lenses by heating them up with a hairdryer to melt the glue holding the lens in, but the glue was not melted enough all the way around for it to all come off at once. One was only broken some around the edges, but the other lens broke in half.  Bummer!  I should have put the lights in the oven at 250 degrees for 15 minutes one at a time.

For the parking light rings, I used the same superflux LEDs as in my mirrors, just red.  They are wide and bright enough and easy to work with.  Again, they came with the 470 ohm resistors needed to run these at 12 volts.

 

The brake lights were supplied by superbrightleds.com again.  These are the same 1.5" by 1.5" boards that I used in my window brake light, but this time I would not need to cut them in half.  I got 3 of the narrow angled-LED boards for each side.

 

For the turn signals, I found these nifty lights on autolumination.com .  They fit perfectly inside of the red parking light rings.  But the cover on the top was too big so I cut it off with my Dremel.

 

I started with the red rings.  I used cardboard cereal boxes to mount the LEDs just like in my mirrors.  I painted one side silver and poked the 21 LEDs through after marking where each one would go so that the turn signal fit in the middle and the entire piece fit in the light.

 

I soldered a resistor to each LED and connected everything just like with the mirror project.   You can see the broken lens.

 

Perfect fit!  You can see the red side light on the bottom of the light next to the large rectangular light.  It is 6 of the red LEDs in a tight line.  The wire runs through the moisture vent that happens to be right there at the side light and then back into the red rings.  They are Epoxied in place when I am done.

 

Next were the turn signals that would go in the middle of the red rings.  Unfortunately, they were not anywhere near bright enough.  The only thing to do was to replace the LEDs.  After cutting off the lens with the Dremel, I took out the LEDs in the outermost ring.  I had some other LED bulbs from autolumination that I was not using anymore and those LEDs ended up in the light fixture instead.  Fortunately, the LEDs worked with the same resistors and everything perfectly.  View the larger picture for details.  I painted them silver and Epoxied them into the middle of the red cardboard rings, and they fit perfectly.

 

Last were the brake lights.  All I had to do was paint them silver and Epoxy them together using more coat hangers.

 

I then made sure that each of the light components had the correct socket.  The brake lights got 1156 sockets since they only needed one connection.  The running light/turn signals got a 1157 connector -- one connection for each with a common ground.  The sidelights wired straight to the circles with the wires running through the moisture vents.  This picture shows the new wiring so that I could have the lights be plug-and-play.  All I had to do was switch the brake light and turn signal wires.  I also added a relay on each side to turn the signals on with the backup light to give me even more light when backing up.

 

Here is a pic of the pieces completed and installed with Epoxy.

 

Finished wiring.

 

Finished product.

 

On to the comparisons!  Here are pictures comparing my new LED taillights to my old aftermarket lights with drop in LED bulbs.

Here are some new pics comparing the new taillights with the stock lights (I got rid of the relay that made the turn signals turn on with the back-up lights).   The new lights are brighter in every pic.

And some random pics:

 

Project Completed in January 2007 (Sold)

Here I describe in detail the process I went through to retrofit LEDs into my lights up until this point (the cardboard method).  Note: it is much easier and more professional looking if you use real circuit boards (take a hint and do it the right way like I do now).

I bought some more white "super flux" LEDs with 4 wires off Ebay just like in my mirror project (see above). 

 

I was going to fashion an array of LEDs that sat in the reflector so I had to open up the light.

 

Rather than take off the lens (like last time), I decided to cut it open with my Dremel tool.  You can see the curved reflector in the back that will be covered with LEDs.

 

Next, I measured the opening to be 4 inches wide and 1 inch high.  I got a cardboard cereal box and painted one side of it with chrome spray paint.  I drew a 4x1 inch rectangle on the chrome side and then marked where the LEDs will go.  As you can see, there will be 3 rows of 11 LEDs.

 

Then to the LEDs.  1st, I poked the LED wires onto the cardboard to marked where the LED wires would go.  You can see the 4 indentations from the 1 LED.

 

Then I took a safety pin and poked 4 holes through the cardboard where the indentations were.

 

Then I poked the LED through!

 

After repeating for all of the LEDs, it look like this.

 

Then I looped the resistors around both of the LED's positive wires to ensure long lasting goodness.  It looks like I used a Lucky Charms box lol.  The ground wires worked the same way, except that I used one long wire to wrap around all of the LEDs' ground wires.

 

Then I wired all of the resistors together.

 

Then I wired a 1156 socket to a spot on the positive and negative wires making sure that they did not touch anywhere (and short out). This picture is of the back of the completed LED product after trimming the extra cardboard off.

 

Then I used Epoxy to hold the LEDs in place.

 

Then I put the light back together and caulk where I cut the light to ensure a waterproof seal.

Here are pics of it installed on my car:

These are much brighter than any LED bulbs I have seen.  They are even visible when the sun is shining on them (which is good for people who want to see my turn signal lol).  In the pictures below, the left one is before, and the right one is after.

 

Project Completed in June 2007 (For Sale )

I finally got around to completing the side markers I got in December 2006.  I needed to put LEDs in these so that they would be bright enough and so that the light would shine out the sides.  Now my signal could be seen when I was changing lanes on the highway.

This is what I started with.  You can see that the light didn't actually shine out of the sides so I had to cut out the Z so that light would come through.

 

First, I found the screws on the back by scraping off some of the tape, and I took them out.

 

The entire light came apart at that point.

 

See the chrome Z pieces in this picture?  I cut out the Zs with my Dremel so that the light would shine out the Z opening.

 

Then I covered both sides of the opening with scotch tape so that the light would be diffused and you wouldn't be able to see the LEDs inside.

 

Put back together so you can see where the light will shine through.

 

Testing with a 194 LED bulb.  This wasn't going to light up the Z very well, so I had to put something else in there.

 

After much deliberation, I decided to get some of these LED bulbs from Ebay.  Since the side markers were only going to flash normally (they would be off most of the time), the LEDs would not burn out.  I simply removed the LED circuit board from the end of the 1156 metal base and put it in the light and hooked up wires to it.  Then I screwed the side markers back together.

 

Then, I cut the opening with a 1 inch drill bit and fed the wires through.  I used the stiff green wire under the hood to pull the side marker wires up through the fender.  Then I wired the side marker to the turn signal.

 

I did not like that they were silver colored, so I painted them black.

 

Much better, and complete!

 

You can see the 3 1 watt LEDs a little behind the tape.

 

Now it is very bright!  It uses 3 watts of LED power.  It is easy to see during the day.

 

 

Project Completed in September 2007 (Sold)

Since I had to use the stock mirrors, I wanted to make them pretty by painting them, so I painted them black with my plastic paint.

 

Here is the back of the mirror cover.  Looks like removing the light will be easy!  Take off the 4 screws.

 

Once that is out, I used the screwdriver to peel the plastic off of the back.  The circuit board came out easily (I was not going to use this at all).  There were 8 LEDs out the front and 2 out the side, half of each color.  You can see the two LEDs going to the side light in this picture.

 

Here, the blue and amber LEDs are on.  I was disappointed that the LEDs were just some small ones that fired out and none of the light went into the reflectors.

 

You can see that there were LEDs facing out the sides towards the back (which was key for me).  This signal could be seen from the side so I wouldn't need my side markers anymore.

 

On to the LEDs. I got these 3 watt side-firing Luxeon LEDs and their respective bright/dim power transformers from autolumination.com .  They have built in heat regulators so that the LEDs turn off if they get too hot (which happens very easily).

 

In this closeup, you can see how the lenses on the LEDs fire most of the light sideways.  I wanted this because I used these LEDs to light up the reflectors.  And they did a very good job.

 

I also used some of the 20 mA LEDs that I used in every project.  These LEDs would fire forward just like the blue/amber LEDs did.  I wanted to put 4 pairs of them facing outwards (just like before) but they didn't fit.  So I had to sand them down skinny, as you can see the two LEDs wired to the resistor are much skinnier than the other two.  I also mounted one of these out the side.

 

Here you can see how I mounted the 4 pairs of LEDs in the openings plus the one LED out the side.  The 4 pairs of LED are glued to that little support between each 2 pairs.  I lined up the LEDs with the lines on the lens so that the light was focused.

 

The hard part was getting the 3 watt LEDs in between everything.   I managed, though, with much forcing.

 

Here is the back with all of the wiring complete.  It was hard to get all of those wires to fit.  This resulted in a short as you can see the black spot.  Originally, I was going to have the 3 watt LEDs be dim for the parking light and bright for the signal, but doing so generated so much heat that the wires melted.  So, I fixed the mess and decided that all of the front LEDs would be the signal.  The side light was supposed to be bright and dim as well, but it ended up being just a parking light.  In the end, these signals were harder to see than before with the diablo mirrors, so I still needed the side markers.  This project really was a flunk.

 

Here it is from the front and mounted to the mirrors.  You can see the 8 forward LEDs being magnified by the lens.  They ended up being very bright.  The 8 LEDs in the front and the 2 3 watt LEDs behind them blink with the turn signal, but the side light has extra wires so that it stays on with the parking light.

 

Closeup at night with parking light and turn signal on.  It is quite bright.  It was also much whiter than my other lights so it didn't match.

 

 

Project Completed in March 2008

Since I needed some custom turn signals for my 2002 front bumper, I got these fixtures from autolumination.com .

 

As you can see in this picture, the new lights are brighter than my old LED turn signals (probably because lots of LEDs have burned).  But, after installing the new lights, I realized that they would not be bright enough.

 

Instead of using the previous white LEDs that I had been using for all of my projects, I found some new 1/2-watt superflux LEDs that are 4 times brighter than the ones I had been using.  They have 4 LED chips inside of each LED, so they are incredibly bright.  They are about 5000K (very white).  I had decided that I would rather have white lights on the front instead of the bluish ones.

 

Here, you can see how much brighter the new LEDs are when compared to my previous white LEDs.  The new ones are on the left obviously.  Also see how white they are.  I opened the lights and the LED board came out easily (you can see it in this picture).

 

Here is the light taken apart (with a screwdriver).  I did not use a board for the new LEDs but I just hot-glued them to the reflectors.  They fit very nicely, and you can see how the chrome reflectors magnify the light source (the yellow part).  These will be bright!

 

Here is the back.  I wired each set of 3 LEDs together in series and then all 5 series are wired in parallel.  Then I soldered red and black wires on.  I do not have any resistors in the light because I used a large power resistor to power the entire light (see below).

 

Here, you can see how much brighter the new LEDs were.   The new ones are on the right.

 

The lights mounted with double-sided tape and two screws.

 

To power the lights, I built this power-wave-modulator (PWM).  I got the components from Azdave on HIDplanet.com .  This thing has diodes to prevent current from going the wrong way through the LEDs (the 4 black things on the right).  The two large black heat sinks on the left are Sharp resistors that prevent the voltage reaching the LEDs from ever exceeding 12 volts.  It has a potentiometer (the blue thing in the middle) so that I could have the LEDs be bright (for the turn signal) and dim (for the parking light).  This thing dims the LEDs by flickering them rapidly.  The high-speed flicker causes the LEDs to appear dim when they really aren't.

 

I stuck the thing under the intake and ran all of the wires.  The power resistors came off of the end and were wrapped in masking tape.  I had 4.7 ohms of resistance going to each front turn signal.

 

Here they are in bright mode for the turn signal

 

and in dim mode for the parking light.

 

Project Completed in March 2008

I started by taking off the lens cover.  Just remove the one screw holding it in place and the lens came off.  Much easier than on my first mirrors.

 

Then, I took out the entire LED board and cut the wires off.  The board was just screwed on with three screws.  Again, removing the LEDs was much easier than on my first mirrors.

 

Since the lens had ripples in it the LEDs would be out of focus.  I sanded down 30 LEDs (6 more than I ended up using) so that they were flat on top instead of round.  This way the light source would be close enough to the lens that the ripples would have no effect on the light pattern.  These are the same LEDs that I used in my third front turn signals, the 4-chip 1/2 watt ones.

 

I decided to just glue the LEDs to the mirror lens rather than using a board.  You can see that the light source sat right on the surface.  I sanded the outside of the lens with fine sandpaper to make it somewhat cloudy to help hide the LEDs and wires and make it look cleaner (the LEDs are on in this picture).

 

I also wanted to have the mirror light be seen from the rear, so I came up with this nifty design.  You can see the six 2 volt yellow LEDs from besthongkong.com that I wired together in series and glued to the edge of the mirror.  It worked very well because it was kind of arrow-shaped but more subtle than that.  These LEDs were the 5-chip kind, so they were really bright (5 times brighter than normal LEDs).  They were definitely the best LEDs for this application.

 

I hot-glued all of the white LEDs to the lens and wired them up together (3 LEDs in a series).  Again, I did not put any resistors in the mirrors because I was going to use 1 large power resistor to power them (see previous section).  The wires that go out the side power the yellow LEDs facing the rear.

 

The mirrors wired back to the PWM under the intake that powered the front signals (see previous section).  There were 5 ohms of resistance going to each mirror.

 

Here is the mirror in dim mode (parking light).

 

Here it is in bright mode for the signal.

 

This light wired straight to the stock signal wires (not to the PWM) so that it only lit with the signal, not with the parking light.  They were brighter than the tail light signals!

 

Project Finished in April 2009

So, after I was ticketed $50 for having white turn signals in the rear (my only ticket), I decided to make new tail lights.  This time, I would not break the lenses in half and use Epoxy that would yellow everywhere.  I would do a professional job this time.  I wanted pretty much the same LED tails, but better-looking.  So, I got another pair of the leaky APC tail lights and started over.

Step 1 was to realize how I wanted to set up everything.  I was going to have red rings in each red light again as the parking light, but it would get brighter as the brake light and the middle of the ring would light up with the brake light as well.  For the turn signal, I would put orange LEDs firing into the reflectors.  The back up light would be white LEDs facing out from the regular spot.  I was going to leave the red circles/reflectors in place and have the upper 2/3 of the light be red for a clean look.  Also, I wanted red rear LED daytime running lights like rear fog lights in Europe.  

Step 2 was to get the lens off.  This was hard for me to start because I knew how easy it was to break the lens.  In other words, do not use a hair dryer to heat up and soften the glue, but put them in the oven!  Some stock lights cannot be baked open because they are plastic-welded shut.  Aftermarket lights are probably going to have a bead of gray caulk-like glue around the lens to hold it in and keep the water out.

I put the lights on a baking tray and got my knife and glove ready for when I took the lights back out.  At first, I preheated the oven to **(see below ) degrees and put the lights in the oven for ** minutes.  The glue was still too stiff, so I preheated the oven to ** and put the lights in there for ** minutes.

 

Once it warmed up, I turned off the oven and put the baking sheet in (making sure that the lights did not touch any parts of the oven and melt).  Once the lights are in the oven, just leave them there for a while.  Basically, the heat has to penetrate all of the way through the glue to soften it up.  Just heating the outside won't help. 

 

I pulled the first light out after about ** minutes.  I used the knife/screwdriver to start pulling the light apart but the glue was not soft enough and the edges of the lens broke some.  So I left the other light in there for a while longer and when I took it out the lens came right off!  It was soooo easy.  I had to be careful while taking the lens off because the gray glue became like chewed bubble gum or melted cheese.  It was very stringy and if it gets on anything (chrome or lens), it will only come off with WD-40.  I made this mistake the first time, so just make sure to separate the strings one at a time so that they don't get on anything.

You'll end up with the light and lens separated and perfect.  Here is everything separated.  Unfortunately, when I was separating the first light, the screw driver broke through part of the lens and scraped the side of the light (it isn't easy to see in the picture).  Also, I had the heat up too high and one of the lenses warped and the chrome turned cloudy.  I would have to find some new lights and try again.

 

By the way, if water gets in your lights it could be disastrous.  See black stuff on the chrome? I have no idea how that happened, but I know that I was drying the water out of the light when it formed.  This had never happened to any of my other lights before, including the first set I had just like these.  Also, you can see how the lens on the driver's side light warped on the bottom (notice how the lines in the light bend up and then back down in front of the turn signal).  All of this bad stuff happened to the driver's side light, but the passenger light was perfect except for the cracked edges that you can see a little bit on the bottom in this picture.

 

---

Much later, I tried to open my red/clear tail lights in the oven for take 2 (no pictures).  I followed the same procedure except different temperatures and timings **.  The same thing happened.  I got the first light apart perfectly but I left the second light in too long and it melted and warped like crazy.  So, I had a perfect driver's-side light from this set and a good passenger's-side light from the previous set.

** Since I ruined two sets of lights I did not want to post my numbers up here for fear that you would ruin yours.  However, I know now what I did wrong.  You have to do your lights ONE AT A TIME!  Preheat the oven to 250 degrees and put one light in.  You can leave the heat on, but make sure that it is preheated first.  I'm not sure how long it will take for your lights, but after about 10-15 minutes the lens came right off.  The trouble was that I left the second light in after I took the first one out so it stayed in too long and melted.  Then, do the second light.

---

Now that I had the lights apart I could make the LED boards.

Here was the assortment of parts used.  I had the LEDs, the parts for 15 voltage regulators and another PWM.  I was also using real LED boards (brown) now.

 

Here are the LEDs that I used. The red Lego bin is red-orange LEDs (NOT red, the red ones aren't as bright), the yellow Lego bin is yellow LEDs, and the bag is white LEDs.  The red-orange and yellow LEDs are genuine Lumiled Superflux LEDs.  NOT the cheap Ebay imitations I had been using.  The difference?  The Ebay superflux are only 20 mA while the Lumiled superflux are 70 mA (3.5 times brighter!)  The Lumileds are much higher quality and can be found in many car's stock LED lights.  I got them from Azdave on HIDplanet.com, so contact him if you want these LEDs.  The white LEDs are not normal superflux, either, but they are the new 4-chip ones that run at 100 mA so they are 5 times brighter than the old white superflux.

 

I bought some PCB DIY boards from Ebay and they were very good quality.  I decided to use real boards instead of cardboard like in the past for obvious reasons lol.  To make them look nice I covered the front side (not the side with the copper circles but with the white lines) with clear packing tape and I sprayed the tape chrome.  This way all of the holes that I wouldn't be using were covered up and it was not the ugly brown color.

 

I started to come up with the arrangements of LEDs for each light.  The board on the top shows the LED array that I was going to use in the red circle lights.  The outer most ring was going to be lit with the parking light (like in my first LED tail lights), and all of the LEDs were going to get bright for the brake light.  The boards on the bottom are for the back up lights and turn signals.

 

For the back up lights I had 6 parallel sets of 3 white LEDs in series.  On the back of the board you can see how easy it was to solder the LEDs together.  You don't need any extra wire (like I did when I used cardboard).  So, each LED takes 3.4 volts and 100 mA.  Three of these in series is 10.2 volts and 100 mA.  To calculate the resistance needed, go to this site: ledcalc.com .  It is great!   The supply voltage is 12 volts, the voltage drop across the LED is 10.6 (remember we have 3 of them in series), the desired LED current is 100 mA, and the number of LEDs connected is 6.  This calculates a resistance of 3 ohms, which is next to nothing.  I would need a huge power resistor that could handle all of the LEDs and only provide 3 ohms of resistance.  HOWEVER, I ended up taking these apart because I didn't like how they looked in the lights.  I used just a drop-in LED bulb instead.  So all of this for nothing.

 

These were the turn signal components.  They would sit in the light and fire to the sides (the reflectors).  I needed to do this because the outer tail light lens had ripples in it which destroyed the LED pattern if they were to face directly out of the lens.  These LEDs used 2.6 volts at 70 mA.  So, 4 (not 3) of these in series was 10.4 volts at 70 mA.  That is why I could use 4 of these in series because the total voltage did not exceed 12.  So, you see 2 pairs of pieces in the picture.  The larger ones shined facing towards the middle of the car, and the smaller ones faced towards the outside.  The larger ones had 7 rows of 4 LEDs, and the smaller ones had 5 rows or 4 LEDs.  Therefore, I had 48 LEDs in each turn signal so the resistance was 1.9 ohms. 

 

Here are the pieces so far sitting in the light for clarification (I removed the backup lights and turn signals because I didn't like them). 

 

This ended up being the final design for the red circles (notice that the LEDs are different than in the picture a ways up).  There were basically 4 ovular rings.  Before I had circles that were just cut off on the bottom to match the red circles.  This time I wanted full rings.  This was what I came up with.  The outer ring (36 LEDs) was the parking light and the inner rings (40 LEDs) were the brake light.  It was pretty amazing that I was able to get the concentric rings on a square board!

 

Here is the picture of the other PWM I made (see above section ).  This supplies the LEDs with 12 volts instead of 13-14 volts like normal.  I used this on my red parking light rings so that they would be dim until they got bright with the brakes.

 

I put together the 15 voltage regulators (for future use as well as for the tail lights).  I got all of the pieces from Azdave on HIDplanet.com .  They are Sharp 12-volt regulators mounted to heat sinks with thermal compound and screws, 3 amp diodes, and 0.33 capacitors.  You can see how I wired them together.  The electricity goes in through the diode, into the first leg of the regulator, and then the 12 volt signal goes out of the second leg. The capacitor connects the first and third (ground) legs to make the output voltage more accurate.  The diode prevents negative/reverse current so that the electricity only flows one way through the LEDs.  These are basically the right-most part of the PWM and the black diodes in the picture above.

 

For the third brake light on the lip spoiler, I just put 6 sets of 4 red Superflux LEDs in a skinny line.  The resistance needed for this light was 3.81 ohms, so I found a 3.75 ohm resistor and wired to the positive side.

 

Here it is looking straight on.  I painted the board black instead of chrome and I sanded it down as skinny as possible to get it to fit in the spoiler.

 

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Then I tried to paint the upper parts of the lights red.  Remember that one was already red and the other was clear.  I got this red tail light paint from Ebay and it worked pretty well, but it wasn't a perfect match.  I also sprayed it way too thick on the edges so it looked terrible.  It also blocked more of the LED light.  There was no way I would be able to use the first two pairs of lights I got for this project, so they went in the trash.

 

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I got a second pair of red/clear tail lights and this time I used my Dremel to cut the backs of the red circles off.  I did not remove the lens or anything.  This was very easy, and the red reflector circles prevented most of the particles from entering the rest of the light.  I banged them around to get the dust out.

 

Then the red LED ring boards hot glued to the backs of the openings.  They fit perfectly!  It worked very well and it was very easy.  I did not do any other custom LEDs in the lights to keep it simple and easy.  The backup and turn signal lights were drop-in LED bulbs (not custom).  There are no resistors in this picture, only LEDs.

 

Then I hot-glued the backs onto the LED boards and put clear silicone caulk around the edges to seal them up.  These three steps took only one day!  That is why the caulk isn't all clear yet in this pic.  If I ever need to replace LEDs or change anything it is really easy to take them back apart.

 

Look closely and you'll see the LEDs in the red circles.  The LED boards looked nice and clean in there.  They were very unnoticeable when the LEDs were off.  It looked very OEM.

 

This is where the power resistors wired in.  I cut the wires and put the resistors in line with the positive wires.  On each side, the brake lights got two 2.21 ohm resistors in parallel for 1.14 ohms total, and the parking light rings got a 1.5 ohm and a 0.35 ohm resistor wired in series for 1.85 ohms total.  I used shrink-tubing to seal it up.

 

Then I tested them out to make sure that they worked.  The rings lit up like this

 

and the circles+rings were like this.  The spoiler light wasn't working for some reason, but I was going to replace it anyway.

 

The next day I customized the wiring going to the tail lights so that the LEDs did what I wanted.  This is everything taken apart (it wasn't that hard once I figured it out).

 

Here is the PWM for the red rings and the voltage regulator for the brake lights.  The PWM had three inputs: 1 for the parking light (dim), 1 for the brake light (bright), and an extra bright one that I used for my rear fog light so that the rings could be seen in plain daylight.  I really had to disect the wire harness to get all of this to work.  I also wired the spoiler brake light here.

 

Then I put the wires back together and it was all done!  Now the tail lights would plug straight in and work flawlessly.  The LEDs were fully regulated and protected at this point so that they would last forever.

 

This little toggle switch is what I used to turn the rear fog lights/driving lights on or off.  It was a temporary solution until I could get another fog light switch that matched the one for the front lights.

 

The next two pictures demonstrate the rear fog light.  When the head lights clicked on to the first position (parking lights), the rings lit up dim (left picture).  However, regardless of the parking light setting, flipping the toggle switch lit the red rings at full brightness so that they were easily visible during the day (right picture).  The brake lights still operated normally, except when the rear fog was on, the brake light only lit the full circles and the spoiler light.

The brake lights were soooo bright!  Wow.  Even the spoiler light was beyond blinding.  These were brighter than my first LED tail lights and they could be seen from any angle this time.  I didn't have to worry about rear-end collisions anymore lol.

 

Here are some close-ups of the lights:

White LED backup lights (left) and yellow LED turn signals in the tail lights and in the mirrors (right):

The next two pics are of the spoiler brake light:

Whew!  I'm glad that was finished.  That took a really long time to get perfect (and three sets of tail lights!) but I really loved the result and I was very happy with it finally.

That is all for now.  If you have any questions or comments let me know in my guestbook!  Don't forget to rate.