'71-'73 Dart Tail Light Housing ?s

[DartGTDan]

A buddy of mine (with a '71, '72 and/or '73 Dart Swinger) wants to cut the REVERSE lamp portions of his tail light housings off and weld(?) a second set of BRAKE/TAIL lamp housings in their place. He's already scored a 2nd set of housings and BRAKE/TAIL lamp lenses and housings. Can the material used on the 1971 to 1973 Dart tail light housings be welded? I assume the lense openings (BRAKE/TAIL vs. REVERSE) in the bumpers are the same size? Will he have clearance issues (assuming he gets the spacing correct) mounting on them on the car? Plans are to parallel wire the BRAKE/TAIL wiring to each. Anyone ever try/done this? Any advice?

 

[72bluNblu]

So he's deleting the reverse lights and just running two brake/tail lights? Ie, he's not going to modify the bumper and run 3 lenses across or anything like that. What's he going to do for reverse lights?

The housings are a zinc based pot metal, welding them isn't really advisable. You could probably braze them with the right stick as the temperature should be low enough. An epoxy would probably be a better bet though. With proper prep you could probably just JB weld them together. You could epoxy the flat section that faces the outside, then use some flat bar stock and some screws to reinforce the back side across the stock horizontal reinforcing ribs.

Not sure about the clearance, you can see here that the brake/tail section has a different light location, so there's that extension that sticks down.

Honestly though, he might just try changing out the lens and the wiring and see how the light pattern looks. The reverse light section's reflector isn't as wide, so, it wouldn't light the lens exactly the same, but it may not be a super noticeable difference from the outside. As in, maybe not enough of a difference to justify all the work needed to modify the housings. Just a thought.

 

[TrailBeast]

A buddy of mine (with a '71, '72 and/or '73 Dart Swinger) wants to cut the REVERSE lamp portions of his tail light housings off and weld(?) a second set of BRAKE/TAIL lamp housings in their place. He's already scored a 2nd set of housings and BRAKE/TAIL lamp lenses and housings. Can the material used on the 1971 to 1973 Dart tail light housings be welded? I assume the lense openings (BRAKE/TAIL vs. REVERSE) in the bumpers are the same size? Will he have clearance issues (assuming he gets the spacing correct) mounting on them on the car? Plans are to parallel wire the BRAKE/TAIL wiring to each. Anyone ever try/done this? Any advice?

I did this with my 73 and all it took was to replace the backup light lenses with tail brake lenses and wire them with the brake/turns from the other lights.
71-72 and 73 all have four separate lenses, and I think 74 they went to one lense for each side and the backup built into them.

Mine are all LED but this is how they work.
Parking=just the two outer lights
Left turn=both left lights
Right turn= both right lights
Brakes=all four lights

I like it a lot since it doubles my visibility on the turns and brakes, and the LED's use about 1/4 for all four lights as the regular two lenses with incandescent bulbs.

 

[DartGTDan]

I did this with my 73 and all it took was to replace the backup light lenses with tail brake lenses and wire them with the brake/turns from the other lights.
71-72 and 73 all have four separate lenses, and I think 74 they went to one lense for each side and the backup built into them.

Mine are all LED but this is how they work.
Parking=just the two outer lights
Left turn=both left lights
Right turn= both right lights
Brakes=all four lights

I like it a lot since it doubles my visibility on the turns and brakes, and the LED's use about 1/4 for all four lights as the regular two lenses with incandescent bulbs.

TrailBeast you're saying the BRAKE/TAIL lamp lenses will fit the REVERSE lamp housing? I'll have to ask him if he checked that. Obviously, you then had to replace the 1156 (REVERSE lamp) bulb socket with an 1157 (BRAKE/TAIL lamp) bulb socket. I think that's his plan, double the visibility (fear of being rear-ended). Do you know what LEDs you bought (manufacturer and part number if you have that info handy)? Do you have any photos of the process and the final product?

72bluNblu I kind of thought that may be a no go. He doesn't seem to worried about no REVERSE lamps though. Fortunately here in Michigan we don't have vehicle inspections for that kind of stuff.

Thanks for your input(s)!!

 

[TrailBeast]

TrailBeast you're saying the BRAKE/TAIL lamp lenses will fit the REVERSE lamp housing? I'll have to ask him if he checked that. Obviously, you then had to replace the 1156 (REVERSE lamp) bulb socket with an 1157 (BRAKE/TAIL lamp) bulb socket. I think that's his plan, double the visibility (fear of being rear-ended). Do you know what LEDs you bought (manufacturer and part number if you have that info handy)? Do you have any photos of the process and the final product?

72bluNblu I kind of thought that may be a no go. He doesn't seem to worried about no REVERSE lamps though. Fortunately here in Michigan we don't have vehicle inspections for that kind of stuff.

Thanks for your input(s)!!

I probably won't be able to give you the whole process I did in one post.
First off I'll answer the bulb swap brake/tail socket problem.
The LED's don't use different filaments like standard bulbs so socket changing wasn't necessary.
Most LED's bulbs use a resistor to limit the voltage to them making a dimmer light for the tail light and bypassing the resistor for a brake or turn, so bridging the contacts on the socket end of the bulb with a spot of solder makes them work at full brightness all the time in the single contact socket (for adding brake and turn lights only)
I needed to shave one of the posts on the side of the bulb base to get it to fit in the socket where there was a bulb with equal posts (1157's have one higher than the other)
This way all I had to do to connect them in the system is wire that socket to the brake/turn wire on each side inside the trunk.

Second problem.
The bulbs in those housings are at an angle and LED's are usually very directional so I wanted them facing straight back at the lenses.
Using the plastic LED bulb that plugs directly into the OEM socket, I separated the LED panel from the bulb socket and soldered a couple of inches of wire from each of the two contacts on the socket to each on the back of the 12 LED panel.
This way I could plug the bulb base into the socket and mount the LED panel facing straight back at the center of the lenses. (bend your wires accordingly and 1/2 dab of RTV right in the center of the housing to mount the LED panel.)

Third problem
Like I said most LED's are very directional so 9 of them facing straight back wanted to just make a spot in the center of the lenses so I clear contact cemented one of those credit card style magnifiers at the four corners inside each lens to spread the beam (and it did very well).

Just an FYI all four of those lenses can be swapped to any other location but there is a left and a right as to the taper of them following the bumper line.
It's easy to not notice unless you know what you are looking for, so swapping a backup lens out for a brake/tail/turn lens is just that easy as long as you use a left on the left and a right on the right.
Heck even if you got them backwards it's not easy to notice, but the edge of the lens has about 1/4 different taper to it than the bumper line.

My method was before the LED market was so wide spread, so there are direct replacement LED bulbs now.
One criteria for me was to not mod the lenses and housing to where they couldn't be put back stock easily, so I went a little above and beyond to try and follow that.
Right now I am working on assembling a much bigger panel that fills the lenses.
I'm not paying hundreds of dollars for 2 bucks worth of materials as in the Digitails LED panels when I can build them myself.

I'll post some pics later, as I have company over that just arrived.
All in all I think I might just recommend decent LED bulbs instead of going through all this over it.
Just stopped raining so here ya go.
First pic of the car is tail lights and the second is brakelights.
Signals, well you get the idea.

 

[Donny’sDart340]

I probably won't be able to give you the whole process I did in one post.
First off I'll answer the bulb swap brake/tail socket problem.
The LED's don't use different filaments like standard bulbs so socket changing wasn't necessary.
Most LED's bulbs use a resistor to limit the voltage to them making a dimmer light for the tail light and bypassing the resistor for a brake or turn, so bridging the contacts on the socket end of the bulb with a spot of solder makes them work at full brightness all the time in the single contact socket (for adding brake and turn lights only)
I needed to shave one of the posts on the side of the bulb base to get it to fit in the socket where there was a bulb with equal posts (1157's have one higher than the other)
This way all I had to do to connect them in the system is wire that socket to the brake/turn wire on each side inside the trunk.

Second problem.
The bulbs in those housings are at an angle and LED's are usually very directional so I wanted them facing straight back at the lenses.
Using the plastic LED bulb that plugs directly into the OEM socket, I separated the LED panel from the bulb socket and soldered a couple of inches of wire from each of the two contacts on the socket to each on the back of the 12 LED panel.
This way I could plug the bulb base into the socket and mount the LED panel facing straight back at the center of the lenses. (bend your wires accordingly and 1/2 dab of RTV right in the center of the housing to mount the LED panel.)

Third problem
Like I said most LED's are very directional so 9 of them facing straight back wanted to just make a spot in the center of the lenses so I clear contact cemented one of those credit card style magnifiers at the four corners inside each lens to spread the beam (and it did very well).

Just an FYI all four of those lenses can be swapped to any other location but there is a left and a right as to the taper of them following the bumper line.
It's easy to not notice unless you know what you are looking for, so swapping a backup lens out for a brake/tail/turn lens is just that easy as long as you use a left on the left and a right on the right.
Heck even if you got them backwards it's not easy to notice, but the edge of the lens has about 1/4 different taper to it than the bumper line.

My method was before the LED market was so wide spread, so there are direct replacement LED bulbs now.
One criteria for me was to not mod the lenses and housing to where they couldn't be put back stock easily, so I went a little above and beyond to try and follow that.
Right now I am working on assembling a much bigger panel that fills the lenses.
I'm not paying hundreds of dollars for 2 bucks worth of materials as in the Digitails LED panels when I can build them myself.

I'll post some pics later, as I have company over that just arrived.
All in all I think I might just recommend decent LED bulbs instead of going through all this over it.
Just stopped raining so here ya go.
First pic of the car is tail lights and the second is brakelights.
Signals, well you get the idea.

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Very nice