LED Tail, Turn, Stop Front & Rear For The Duster

[Purple Haze]

Decided to fab up some LED running lights for my 70 Duster. Here is a little progress with just about one tail light done. Will keep updating as I go and give a complete list of what I used to complete the project.
First step was to cut some perforated pc board to fit the two slots in the tail lamp.

 

[Purple Haze]

Next was to design my array of LED's, I decided on two rows one with 8 LED's for the tail lights and one with 12 LED's for the turn and stop lights.

 

[Purple Haze]

Next I took the tail light assembly out and removed the lens to see how I was going to locate the two strips. I had to put a few small pieces in with JB Weld for the strips to rest on. You can see these in the first pic above.

 

[Purple Haze]

Next came the tedious task of wiring all the LED's up, more on this latter as I did not get any pics but I will have some from the next tail lamp. Here is what it will look like without the lens, after I will attach the two strips permanently. For now they are just held in place with some strip caulk.

 

[Purple Haze]

Here is a shot of how it looks with the lens on, if you look close you can see the leds behind the lens.

 

[Purple Haze]

As far as the wiring of the LED's go I used the LED Centers Wizard. Here is a link http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz it gives you the wiring diagram and what resistors you will need to complete your project with just a little input that can be found on superbrites web site. All the LED's used are from www.superbrightleds.com and the perforated pc board was from Radio Shack It was a 6x8" sheet. I also purchased some blank sockets so I could use the regular bulb sockets.



More to come.

 

[Purple Haze]

Here is a teaser shot of the tail lamps.

 

[Purple Haze]

And the stop light. Actually the turn signal, thats why it looks a little dim still has the regular bulb in the front. When done I will have to use a different flasher for LED's as they draw less current and the standard flasher will not work.


Will take a couple later when its dark.

 

[Purple Haze]

Here ya go some shots in the dark with no flash this time. First one is just the parking lamp, second is comparison with just the parking lamps, third is comparison brake light and the forth is just a dupe.

 

[Purple Haze]

Here are the pic's of the wiring for the four boards of LED's. First is the series wiring of all the LED's, second is the completed board with resistors and the two rows connected in parallel. Pretty easy, nothing to it if you can solder.

 

[Purple Haze]

Here is the lay out for the front parking and turn signal lights. Its three vertical rows and four horizontal of three LED's each. The upper and lower row of three will be the parking lights and the two center rows of three the turn signals. The three vertical rows fit centered in each of the three lens slots of the shark tooth grill.

 

[RustyRatRod]

Although not my cup of tea by a country mile, I salute you for your workmanship. That looks very nice. Great job.

 

[pauly]

Wow! Amazing how much brighter those are! I have been thinking about doing something like this for my duster, but I should concentrate on getting it on the road first!

 

[KevinB]

Looks great!

 

[prostreeter9]

Wow those look great. Do you mind sharing how much it cost?

Jon

 

[Dartfan71]

Love it! Stealing your idea on my 71 Dart. My brake lights are pathetic at best and have two full sets so the next owner could change it back if I ever decide to sell.

 

[66Dvert]

Here are the pic's of the wiring for the four boards of LED's. First is the series wiring of all the LED's, second is the completed board with resistors and the two rows connected in parallel. Pretty easy, nothing to it if you can solder.

Not to bad looking. I did notice though that you don't have a voltage regulator on there.
I would look into putting it right on the board (might mean making a few) to limit voltage to 12v

It might cause you some problems down the line if you don't limit you tails and turns to 12v due to the fact that when the battery is down or you turn on or off different accessories, light or whatnot the voltage normally would spike one way or the other, that could blow out some or even all of the leds if you have them setup with resistors to 12v also and it spikes to 13.5 or better. I ended up using 2 total for my 66 dart. one was wired at the light switch (tail/parking light spade) and one at the brake switch that way 12v only went to the brakes/turnsignal switch and it was also limited at the parking light level too.

I left my brake light switch loose to check to see how hot mine got for over 3 days of constant "on" to make me feel better (yeah it was on a small battery charger to boost the battery over 13.5 volts and I had a meter on it to make sure all my lights just got 12v no matter what without overheating or blowing out. of course I'm running a few more leds(48 x per bucket)in the light than you are so heat of the leds and resistors ( and being in florida) was going to be a factor for me.

here is mine... I'll have to look around somewhere there is a in progress pic on the whole thing but I can find all of them yet.

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[Purple Haze]

Thanks all, when I used the wizard to get the wiring diagram I used 13.8 for the input voltage.
Here is a list of parts used costs.

20ea - 56 ohm 1 watt resistors 1.09 for a pack of 4
80ea - HF5-R5590 LED's .25 EA
24ea - HF5-Y5590 LED's .25 EA
4ea - BAY 15D Empty Base .49 EA
2ea - 6" x 8" Perfboard 2.79 EA

Total 38.99

Plus if you need wire and solder and anything like that. I bought extras just to be safe.