Crazy LED Tailamp Idea!

MIA_02Liberty · **Posted:** Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:56 pm

Ok guys listen up,

So I was outside today measuring my roof and all for the roof rack and I decided to start measuring stuff and came upon the tailamp. I measured the brake/turn signal and it measured roughly around 5 inches.

My question is this.... What if....

I install this inside:

Yes I know someone here will tell me... Just buy the LED tails... My problem is this... I want something that looks low key and OEM. Only problem I see with it would be making that one LED to turn signal, brake and regular light due to it being two seperate lights becoming one.

What do you guys think?

riptricket · **Posted:** Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:57 pm

i like it.. go for it!!!

MIA_02Liberty · **Posted:** Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:01 pm

All I have to do is get an extra pair of tails to work on. The connection on these LED lights are a 3 pin pigtail harness. If I can splice a 3 pin pigtail to an OEM tailamp harness it may work but I have to figure out how.

tommudd · **Posted:** Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:09 pm

so you are wanting one lamp to serve as parking, brake, stop , turn? or are you wanting the red ones for parking, stop and yellow for turn? Couple of ways to do it, let me know what or which way you are heading and I maybe able to help. If you look at LEDs for trucks they come with a rubber grommet around them, think about just cutting the light itself and mouting them in the light ( instead of inside the body of the light) and then paint the rest of the light body color

MIA_02Liberty · **Posted:** Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:14 pm

Well I know about these lights because I drive a truck myself.

The rubber grommet around them is seperate from the light housing itself. I am actualy thinking of taking the round light apart and using it's components (LED light not the housing) to put inside my tailamps (Cutting the inside of the housing to fit the round dimensions of these). And finally using this one 4" round LED light to do both functions of the brake light and turn signal. Get me?

tommudd · **Posted:** Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:21 pm

MIA_02Liberty wrote:

Well I know about these lights because I drive a truck myself.

The rubber grommet around them is seperate from the light housing itself. I am actualy thinking of taking the round light apart and using it's components (LED light not the housing) to put inside my tailamps (Cutting the inside of the housing to fit the round dimensions of these). And finally using this one 4" round LED light to do both functions of the brake light and turn signal. Get me?

Part of the problem will be running the LEDS inside and shining through the red lens of the outside of your current light, for some reason it causes it to look funky I think. May want to check that out, seems most will tell you to run a white LED bulb inside the red lense.

LEDs on a truck do look cool for sure, I stopped driving 6 years ago but had 98LEDs on the cab and sleeper of my Pete alone.

XC204 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 18, 2009 2:03 pm

Red LED's will be correct through red lenses white will not do as well I have made sets for my boat . utility and camper trailer from scratch and experimented wilh white leds. Its a wavelength thing ! A super bright Cree 3 watt led does ok but the small leds like are in the post not so good.
I have 2 of the 3 watt leds in my bike lite I built in a Mag Lite head it out shines a 20w halogen and only draws .35 amps I use 4 AA nmh 2500
ma cells not a big 12v gel cell like the halogens use. http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/index.php? use this link for LED and Lighting concerns.

ATXKJ · **Posted:** Wed Feb 18, 2009 3:24 pm

LED have a very narrow band of light - so Yellow LED's in a red plastic lens - may have all light blocked by the lens
even white LED's in red or yellow.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/carbulb-notes.htm

Rock Lizard · **Posted:** Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:33 pm

If you scroll about halfway done you will see a guy cut holes in his stock XJ taillights and mounted LED's: http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.p ... hts&page=2

I'll have to look later, but there is another XJ guy the did what you were thinking but emptying his housing an putting LED's in it. Turned out pretty good. Now if someone would just make steel taillights for the KJ with LED's, that might be something. :twisted:

riptricket · **Posted:** Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:49 pm

any updates?

infernicus · **Posted:** Wed Nov 11, 2009 8:40 pm

haha, I had this idea like a long time ago.. never went through with it though because the LED lights I found were too expensive, and if I messed up my tailights, I didn't want to spend even more money buying new ones..
I was also thinking about making a fiberglass or something along those lines to replace the whole tailight itself.. nothing happened..
lol..

-Dean

jsc7002 · **Posted:** Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:42 am

infernicus wrote:

haha, I had this idea like a long time ago.. never went through with it though because the LED lights I found were too expensive, and if I messed up my tailights, I didn't want to spend even more money buying new ones..
I was also thinking about making a fiberglass or something along those lines to replace the whole tailight itself.. nothing happened..
lol..

-Dean

I got a set of taillights Ill sell ya cheap if you need them.

jinstall · **Posted:** Wed Nov 18, 2009 9:17 pm

I just use OEM LED replacements and they work just fine. The rears are complete LED.

Crazy LED Tailamp Idea!

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