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I've been looking all over for pictures of modding side markers. I just picked up some Type S rears and one doesn't work and I want to mod all four to just be white. The amber front and red rear looks like shit to be frank lol. Every DIY I've found doesn't have pictures anymore for whatever reason, just text.
Anyone got the hook up on a DIY? Can't justify spending $150 to send mine out to be modded when I can do it myself.
The sarona roof spoiler is on the car, the sidemarkers are on the car, the LED fogs are on the car, the whole navtool setup is done.
I'll start off with the sidemarkers.
Since my original sidemarkers are still fully functional without problems, I did not want to hack them up, so I posted a WTB thread in search for dimmed-out sidemarkers.
Boosejars hooked me up - great guy =)
Once they arrived, I had the Oznium LED modules ordered which arrived shortly.
It basically requires you to replace the OEM board with the oznium LED module.
Sidemarker cut with a mini hack saw
Desoldered the OEM LEDs and used the OEM board for the oznium module to sit on (opposed to making my own board out of a light switch cover like jptl04 did). Also used 3M tape for it to sit higher and above the screws.
Everything was a tight fit and difficult to close the sidemarkers together - trying to make the wires fit, and shaving down the sides of the oznium LED module.
I was pretty satisfied with the results.
Couple things that really bothered me, though.
There were no hotspots from the oznium LED module. It was like one long light bar, which doesn't match the rear sidemarkers.
I was also displeased that the colour temperature was purple-ish white. In cameras it will look blue-ish, but in person they looked purple-white.
I think in these pics I just placed the LED module behind the sidemarker - they actually weren't mounted at the time but you get the idea of how it looks.
I was so set on keeping them the way they are - drove around with them for about a week. I got bugged by them so much, and luckily I came across my buddy paperboy's DIY on how to replace the LED chips on the OEM board to white ones.
That peaked my interest - OEM LED positioning (OEM hotspot look), plus I can choose which colour temp LED bulb to buy.
The DIY basically requires you to unsolder the OEM bulb and solder in the new one, along with removing all the OEM resistors and replacing with a 330 ohm one.
I ordered the white LEDs off of LighthouseLEDs.
They arrived, and I went to work.
Since the OEM LEDs were already removed from the board, all I had to do was unsolder the resistors and use a 330ohm one.
Resistors unsoldered
New resistor in place
LEDs soldered on
Board soldered back onto the sidemarker
I absolutely loved it. I was a bit disappounted that the colour temperature was still purple-ish, similar to the oznium LED modules.
Sorry, no pictures of the final product of this.
I have another spare set of sidemarkers, so I put the OEM orange bulb and white bulb together just to see how it looked just for kicks.
It actually looked really cool - so I'm making a set for my friend spatel83.
I figured once I make an order for the amber bulbs, I might as well make an order for some more white bulbs. Placed the order on Lighthouse LEDs again.
They arrived, and back to work I went.
To my surprise, the amber bulb was really reddish/orange. This is totally illegal, looks almost like red.
Also the white LEDs that came in were whiter than the ones I originally ordered. We'll call these white LEDs "batch #2".
Hoping third time's a charm, I ordered "yellow" LEDs and "Pure white" LEDs from a different site this time: SuperBrightLEDs.
Here's a comparison.
Basically I have 3 different "white" LEDs.
Batch 1 - Most blue
Batch 2 - Less blue, more white
Batch 3 (Pure white from Superbright LEDs) - Pure natural white
Verdict was, the pure white from SuperBrightLEDs was too "pure white" for me - I didn't use them for anything
I ended up swapping the white "batch 1" LEDs on my sidemarkers to the "batch 2" white LEDs from LighthouseLEDs. Not too blue and not too white. It was perfect.
This is where I would insert the final product of my sidemarkers, but they're on my car and I want to wait to reveal everything
Here's a picture of the "hybrid" sidemarker.
A 390 ohm resistor was used in place of the 330 ohm resistor to take into account the different forward voltage of the orange LED.
It consists of Lighthouse LEDs batch #1 (spatel83 wanted more blue so it would be dimmer to not outshine the orange), and the "yellow" LED from SuperBrightLEDs.
That's it for today - I'll update with another post of the sarona roof spoiler another day, and the LED fogs.
Sorry if this post was boring to read, I'm not great at documenting things "excitingly" as some people on here, but hope you guys enjoyed it a bit.
In the future, rather than open up a new thread, go to Google, type in your query (in this case "sidemarker mod") and then add "site:acurazine.com" to it,
You'll find all the answers you're looking for this way
This seems like a bunch of work. Why not just get the Depo ones? They look better than OEM, in my opinion.
It is some work, and may take a couple hours depending on soldering skill.
Cutting the sidemarker open will take around 5-10 mins each with a mini hack saw.
Unsoldering and soldering new LEDs will take around 10 mins each.
Unsoldering the 3 resistors and replacing with a single resistor perhaps 5 minutes each.
Seal everything back together with butyl around 5 minutes each.
As for your question, I think cost may be factor. I spent around $10 on the LEDs and resistors. The DEPO ones are around 60 if I'm correct, for the front pair.
Also the DEPO ones always tend to be too blue or purple in colour for my liking.
The main factor for me was to have matching output. If you ever see a TL with DEPO front markers and OEM rear markers, or vice versa, you notice the DEPO ones light up much more intense, or focused rather than diffused.
Buying all DEPO ones front and rear would be a solution, but more money spent.
02-19-2018 | 09:05 PM
