Racing Gear

This project has been in the works for sometime now...began with the purchase of JDM tails at the beginning of 2008 and it took months to source out the right components.

I installed the outer tails only for now...the inner ones require a bit of modification to the trunk lid to install them so you will have to stay tuned for additional pics / videos with all 4 x LED lights lit up.

It was very difficult to capture the true brightness with the video mode on my camera so I may try redoing the pics / videos tomorrow during the day time.

First a couple of pics:







and the Video:

MMsTSX

oh nice.
they make JDM LED tails you know?
probably more expensive than what you're cost is, but
they do come all ready made and such.
about $800 or so per set.

that video didn't work so well for me.
more pictures would be great.

Racing Gear

I didn't know they made oem jdm led tails...only ones I know of are the ones on yahoo Japan auction which I'm pretty certain made to order(custom).

My brother lives in Japan and he looked into it for me before....but either way, I spent less!

MMsTSX

not OEM, just JDM.
JDM does not mean OEM in any way.
if so all of our aftermarket JDM stuff would not be JDM.

your work is more interesting than the ones sold
in Japan anyway. $800 a set is unreasonable to just about
everyone, so it really doesn't apply to us much.

what you've done does though. it's DIY, probably affordable
and therefore applicable to the rest of us.

so, with that said... care to share any details with the crowd?
type of LEDs, wiring, layout, materials, tools, etc?
that would be greatly received I'm sure for many of us wish there
were OEM LEDs instead of what we have.

Racing Gear

I have no problem sharing the info!

The LED units that I used came from Land Rover tail lights. I bought them on HIDPLANET. Took me a while to get 2 x pairs. I paid around $60-$70 each pair if I recall correctly.

The size of the LED units was perfect for the TSX tail light opening size. Much easier to just drop in a complete unit rather than laying down individual LED's on a custom made board.

The JDM tail lights...my brother sent them to me from Japan but they can easily be had here through Heeltoe, etc...

SInce I sourced out the actual retrofit work & wiring to my my buddy (HID retrofitter by trade), I am not certain how the wiring was done..but I can pist pics of the back of the lights, etc...I just need to host them first so you can look out for an update later!

Racing Gear

These are all the pics I didn't post originally...they may help those members that wish to try out this mod...


These are the LED units I got out of Land Rover tail lights. They light up bright red colour:




Some additional pics of the finished products:

Racing Gear

These may be the where my LED units came from...looks very close. I never saw the donor tails as the LED units had already been removed when they were sold to me.



In terms of wiring, my retrofitter took care of the whole thing so I don't really know what/how he did it but I know he used some diodes to control the reduced/full brighness output.

Just post if anyone has more questions...I will do my best to answer.

vthree

iTrader: (1)

oooh interesting... i wish i could see the video!

MMsTSX

ahhh, I see.
yes, that helps a great deal.
the only thing I'm not liking is that they do not really make a
round shape, it's more hexagonal, but it is sweet.
being that it's from the landrover, that makes it even easier.

wiring isn't much of a problem, making the LED board is the most
problem for me personally. I may just try this myself also, see if
I like it.

good thinking and good mod.

SirBLaughs

iTrader: (1)

^You need to fix that video, this looks fresh...

xenonhid

This looks very promising!

So all we need to do is get the Landrover's LED modules, (ebay, etc) and have them retrofitted?



I may be interested in just doing my outer brake light tails and keep the inner tails halogens so that the heat from the bulb keeps some sort of light back there in snow storms.

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

I wonder if anything here would work:

http://www.buytruckstuff.com/s_product_gp.asp?selcategory=61

Racing Gear

Typically, those truck modules are not that bright/lack intensity. I know someone that took part one of those truck LED's and put them in his tails (he drove an Altima) and they were not that bright...they were okay but not bright like my set up.

ZildJonKim

definitely gotta fix that video so we can get a better idea of what they look like in real life.

Racing Gear

Sorry about the video guys. It is obviously not working now for some reason but I can't edit the post to remove it.

Unfortunately the installer is not available until next week to put the rest of the lights on so I took some better pics instead for now...

I am having tough time taking pics as the tail light output ends up getting diffused (looks like a blob of red light) when I directly aim/focus at the LED light so please forgive me for the poor picture quality as well as the super dirty car!

Also, these picture tends to strongly emphasize the hexagon shape of the LED units I used but in real life they don't appear that way as much.






This one was taken with parking lights on but with no brake applied (note how much brighter/more intense the output is compared to the halogen/inside lights even when just idling):



This one was taken with no ligts on but with brake applied: