Lets talk about complete LED conversions.....

1990Coupe said:

First off.. Prime the car is bad ass! I bought LED's from superbrightled's but obviously they weren't the right ones. Yours are so much brighter.

Second - for that relay, i don't need 2 of them do I? only one right? (sorry i thought there was only 1 relay for the blinkers, 1 for the hazards)

Click to expand...

Thx dude. I'm glad someone else can appreciate it. heh.

As far as the relay....technically you need two. One for the hazards and one for the turn signal (stupid Ford). However, since the LED flasher is square and not round like the stock one it will only work on the turn signal flasher because that is on a dongle about 6" from the fuse box. The hazard flasher actually plugs into a recessed hole in the fuse box that will only take a round flasher unit. Ugh. Have to find a solution for that.

The rule of LEDs is buy the color bulb that the outside light should be. Red bulbs for red lenses. Etc. If you have a clear lens, then for the turn signals you need amber colored bulbs.

The reason for the color matching is that if you have an amber lense. Like an 84-86 or 93 Cobra does out back and you use a white LED bulb then very little of the light will actually make it out. Incandescent bulbs basically contain every color of the rainbow, so a colored lens filters out the unwanted colors and only allows the desired color through. White LEDs have very little light in the yellow/orange end of the spectrum. Which is why they have that clean bluish tint. Since the light level would be so low in the case of amber the bulb would be essentially useless.

Wow. That felt like a physics lesson. Hope that clears it up.

WHY IS NOTHING CONSISTENT ON THESE CARS!

I have a rigid loop festoon bulb (4410) in the hatch....this is the one I bought to replace it. I had to take the dremel and grind down the tabs on my light socket so that the loops of the bulb would fit over them. after that, it works perfectly.

Since I have the T-Tops, I have the standard ford dome light and a 194 bulb in that. I seem to remember from my old 89 Sunroof car that the dome light was different, but I can't remember how. Its interesting that it uses another of those strange bulbs though. Isn't the dome light mounted in front of the sunroof? When I get home I'll pop my hatch light out and take a picture of the mounted bulb & modifactions.

I'm not sure on the glove box light, I haven't looked at it yet. And....there is an ashtray light? I didn't know that. heh.

The interesting one is going to be the map light. Mainly because mine doesn't work.....whenever I drop the map light the damn thing trips a fuse and kills my radio. I think the screws are too long and shorting on the roof of the car. But I don't use it, so I haven't been worried about it.

As far as the vanity mirrors go....well...I don't have visors.....so you're on your own there.

On a side note, one of my license plate lights has died. 3 of the 6 LEDs are dead and the remaining 3 are flashing like a strobe light. They are about 2 years old. Not sure why that happened as these things are supposed to last longer than the car.

Now, I've been looking at replacements....and while I could just get the same cool white one's I have now...there are several new options available since I ordered these. The cool white LEDs run in the 9500k color temp range, they have several offerings in the 194 size that run in the 4500-5500k range (Pure White) they call it. A normal incandescent bulb runs in the 3000k range. I definitely don't want to go lower than 4500k to keep away from the incandescent look....but at the same time, I don't know what the coloring will be. I can't find any lit examples of the difference b/t 4500/5500/6000/9500. I obviously know what the 9500k bulbs look like, but I have no basis of comparison to the others. Has anyone seen the new Lexus LED license plate lights? thats what I'm picturing the lower numbers to look like. hrmm....

Reverse lights came in......I got these from V-LED's...and I must say...they are pretty f'n bright. I'll have to report back after some night maneuvers to check the visibility....but they are much brighter than I thought they would be.





Mike,

Here are the closeups of the hatch light. Its kind of hard to tell but I had to dremel the sides of those two prongs so that the loops of the bulb would fit over them. No biggie.





And finally, the reason I was asking about the inside of the tail light lens....I picked up one of these:



I was thinking about wiring a bunch of them together to fill the entire brake light lens. One problem. By my calculations, it would cost about $180 PER SIDE to do this....I didn't realize how small 1½" was in comparison to the lens. By rough estimate you'd need a grid of 6x3 of these to fill the whole lens....they're $10 each.



However, were it a prudent investment, it would be completely badass and completely functional. Oh well...maybe when I have more money.

Update on the reverse lights: They are in fact brighter than the stock incandescent bulbs. I can see the entire planet when backing up. Very pleased.

And yeah, after I've completed each stage (for example once all my exterior lights are done) I will make a new thread with all pictures, parts, etc. It'll be grand.