{REVISED 13/06/12} (all ammendments on bottom of writeup)
Hi guys. I now have enough led strips to do one complete taillight.
I'll base this tutorial on the one light since the other will be the same.
(This for for a '71 mustang, and there's no real reason why the same cannot be applied to the '72 and '73 mustangs)
As I finish the other light, I will ammend this tutorial and post an extra couple of pix with both led taillights on and maybe a quick youtube video of them both in action.
BASIC SUMMARY
The concept is extremely simple:
Buy the led strips (I bought mine from ebay)
remove and open up your 2 piece taillight (4 bolts)
install the led strips on the inside (3 needed per side)
perform some basic wire joining/crimping
reassemble taillight and reinstall back in car
done.
DETAILS
This is what I bought from ebay.
Do a search for something very similar or search the store name.
If he runs out of them, ask him when he is getting more in or likewise tempt him with a group-buy to keep the same low prices.
You will need to order 6 individual led strips to do the all 3 segments per side. 2 segments look cool but 3 look "uber" cool (thanks to all the initial posters who talked me into doing all 3 segments).
Upon receiving them, and before putting them in the taillight, just test them first to make sure that you haven't received a DOA.
This will save frustration and time. Any 12V DC source if fine.
PLEASE NOTE: The GOLD colored wire is positive (+) and the SILVER is negative (-). Althought these are "short" protected, be very careful when connecting them up.
As I have already installed 2 strips in my initial "hybrid led tail lights" thread a couple of weeks ago, I will go into detail on installing the center led strip (the principal is the same for all).
You first start in one corner as pictured below (you must start with the wire end first (as pictured) as we will be cutting excess leds off from the end!)
The leds must be pointing down, touching the red plastic lens.
and with a hot glue gun, (the hot glue gun will not damage anything, you can flick it off with your finger when cool) just tack and hold in about 3 places on the side between the led strip and the taillight lens wall.
About 15 seconds later you can let go because the glue cools and holds very quickly. For the corners, I used a heat gun for about 10 seconds to soften the strip to make it bend a bit tighter. Put a little extra glue in the corners. Keep doing 2 full spirals until it looks like the picture below. I used a dab of hot glue every inch or so.
When one strip is finished and cut and in place, I also dabbed a bit of hot glue in places to secure it further. (only little dabs at a time).
The trick here is wound the strip as one piece in a spiral but to still give the illusion of a concentric led light pattern. As you reach 2 full rows of leds you will need to cut the strip (cut directly between 2 leds with a sharp pair of side cutters applying opposing force as to not damage the circuitry. (obviously "DO NOT" have it connected to a power source while you do this!). As in the picture above, you will notice that I also ran a bit of glue in several places to hold the 3 separate bits of wiring together in place.
At this stage you can test again buy temporarily joining the 3 GOLD wires together for a common positive (+) and the 3 SILVER wires for a common (-). You will need to strip the individual figure 8 wires to separate the GOLD and SILVER wires. Also strip the ends thoroughly.
Even though it looks as though the ends are stripped, it wouldn't work for me until I stripped the ends thoroughly.
Look at the picture below.
When I first tested the lights I noticed that the middle section leds were in fact lighting up the clear/white reverse lens. We cannot have this. (The problem is exacerbated in my case as I use a yellow globe as my blinkers and I cannot have red lights washing out my critical yellow turn signal lights). For this reason, I used some aluminum tape which I had. I cut it in 4 pieces and stuck it over the top and sides of the leds to shield their light completely. I am very happy with the end result. In fact I then proceeded to cut aluminum tape for the other sections when it dawned on me that this is not the look I want.
I wanted the brake lights to light up the whole red lens (like a traditional brake light) and effectively make the leds transparent whilst braking. To accomplish this means I cannot cover the "braking" led sections. It's just my personal preference. eg: driving during the day, you won't even know that they are installed and at night the car's personality changes. Feel free to modify to suit you own tastes...
lights on
with brakes pressed on
guys as far as wiring goes, I found it very easy to do and to understand what I was doing. My car is wired differently but the principal is the same.
There are 5 different colored wires in your trunk for the various lights. There could be others but not relevent to this tutorial.
GROUND
LIGHTS ON
BRAKES ON
LEFT INDICATOR
RIGHT INDICATOR
The black wire you find in your trunk is a ground wire.
This can be spliced at any point to attach another ground.
The brown wire is a switched 12V+ and controls all your "lights on" lighting (via the light switch in your car).
These 2 wires (black and brown) are all that we need to concern ourselves with to wire up all our leds.
Your brake light sockets have 3 wires attached to them.
One is ground (This can be temporarily unplugged as it is only a mini spade connection. The other 2 are your low beam 5 watt "lights on" lights and the other is your 21 watt filament for your High beam "brakes on" lights. All I did was splice into the brown wire on one of these 3 wire light looms and wired in a little red (or blue) bullet crimp connector. You will need to wire in a matching male and female pair which plug together. This makes it very quick and easy to bypass the leds and go back to normal if needed. Wire up the 3 gang of positive GOLD wires up to the opposite gender crimp connector so as it can replace the gender of the brown wire going to the globe socket. So basically all we are doing is unplugging the normal brown wire 12v to the traditional globe and diverting it to the led instead. Also do the same with a black ground wire with a crimp connector so the ground of the led (3 SILVER wires) can join to the car's black wire and complete the led circuit. As we have only interfered with one globe the other brown wire will still activate the other normal globe as well as the led now in the other segment. You will need to add a male /female pair and keep the brown to the other globe disconnected.
I always use the female connector for live wiring as there is less chance of a short. The ground can be a male connector.
I use my middle segments for blinkers so I didn't have to cut or join any wires. Do the same for the lights on the other side of the car.
I've probably made it sound more complex than it really is, but we're only dealing with a couple of wires so it should be ok for anybody to attempt!
for those who wish to attempt a hybrid led install, good luck and have fun...
Ammendment 1:
I have added extra aluminum tape (pictures below) in the middle segment to block out all the red lens in the center section. This does not affect the function of the leds but in my case I didn't like the way my yellow blinker glowed yellow and also a bit of red. This didn't make sense. Now I will only have pure yellow light for my blinkers. The same logic applies to those who want "white only" reverse lights. This is personal preference.
Ammendment 2
As I finished my second taillight, I tested it on my 12v battery to find that one of the outside sections wasn't working.
My conclusion was that I must have shorted some wires whilst cutting the excess leds off. I did find what looked like a burnt out led towards the end so I cut that one off as well. Then I tested again and found that they all lit up except the last 2. Now my understanding is that the leds require 4v each and are wired up in bunches of 3 (in parallel). I quickly counted the leds in the end segments which ARE working and counted 60. This is divisible by 3 so I was just lucky every time. If you install the led strips as I have (reasonably tight in the corners, then 60 leds will be perfect for the ends.
I haven't counted the center segment leds but what's the bet they they are also a number divisible by 3. All I am saying is when you cut, always cut a number off divisible by 3. It's not a co-incidence that they come in strips of 72 leds. Anyway, I was short on one segment but I managed to strip away a bit of the rubber from one of my earlier led offcuts and got that working. So I will just use 2 separate strips to complete my last segment. I could be wrong with the above statement but I wouldn't risk it. Hopefully all will be completed by the weekend with more photos added.
cheers, Jim.
Hi guys. I now have enough led strips to do one complete taillight.
I'll base this tutorial on the one light since the other will be the same.
(This for for a '71 mustang, and there's no real reason why the same cannot be applied to the '72 and '73 mustangs)
As I finish the other light, I will ammend this tutorial and post an extra couple of pix with both led taillights on and maybe a quick youtube video of them both in action.
BASIC SUMMARY
The concept is extremely simple:
Buy the led strips (I bought mine from ebay)
remove and open up your 2 piece taillight (4 bolts)
install the led strips on the inside (3 needed per side)
perform some basic wire joining/crimping
reassemble taillight and reinstall back in car
done.
DETAILS
This is what I bought from ebay.
Do a search for something very similar or search the store name.
If he runs out of them, ask him when he is getting more in or likewise tempt him with a group-buy to keep the same low prices.
You will need to order 6 individual led strips to do the all 3 segments per side. 2 segments look cool but 3 look "uber" cool (thanks to all the initial posters who talked me into doing all 3 segments).
Upon receiving them, and before putting them in the taillight, just test them first to make sure that you haven't received a DOA.
This will save frustration and time. Any 12V DC source if fine.
PLEASE NOTE: The GOLD colored wire is positive (+) and the SILVER is negative (-). Althought these are "short" protected, be very careful when connecting them up.
As I have already installed 2 strips in my initial "hybrid led tail lights" thread a couple of weeks ago, I will go into detail on installing the center led strip (the principal is the same for all).
You first start in one corner as pictured below (you must start with the wire end first (as pictured) as we will be cutting excess leds off from the end!)
The leds must be pointing down, touching the red plastic lens.
and with a hot glue gun, (the hot glue gun will not damage anything, you can flick it off with your finger when cool) just tack and hold in about 3 places on the side between the led strip and the taillight lens wall.
About 15 seconds later you can let go because the glue cools and holds very quickly. For the corners, I used a heat gun for about 10 seconds to soften the strip to make it bend a bit tighter. Put a little extra glue in the corners. Keep doing 2 full spirals until it looks like the picture below. I used a dab of hot glue every inch or so.
When one strip is finished and cut and in place, I also dabbed a bit of hot glue in places to secure it further. (only little dabs at a time).
The trick here is wound the strip as one piece in a spiral but to still give the illusion of a concentric led light pattern. As you reach 2 full rows of leds you will need to cut the strip (cut directly between 2 leds with a sharp pair of side cutters applying opposing force as to not damage the circuitry. (obviously "DO NOT" have it connected to a power source while you do this!). As in the picture above, you will notice that I also ran a bit of glue in several places to hold the 3 separate bits of wiring together in place.
At this stage you can test again buy temporarily joining the 3 GOLD wires together for a common positive (+) and the 3 SILVER wires for a common (-). You will need to strip the individual figure 8 wires to separate the GOLD and SILVER wires. Also strip the ends thoroughly.
Even though it looks as though the ends are stripped, it wouldn't work for me until I stripped the ends thoroughly.
Look at the picture below.
When I first tested the lights I noticed that the middle section leds were in fact lighting up the clear/white reverse lens. We cannot have this. (The problem is exacerbated in my case as I use a yellow globe as my blinkers and I cannot have red lights washing out my critical yellow turn signal lights). For this reason, I used some aluminum tape which I had. I cut it in 4 pieces and stuck it over the top and sides of the leds to shield their light completely. I am very happy with the end result. In fact I then proceeded to cut aluminum tape for the other sections when it dawned on me that this is not the look I want.
I wanted the brake lights to light up the whole red lens (like a traditional brake light) and effectively make the leds transparent whilst braking. To accomplish this means I cannot cover the "braking" led sections. It's just my personal preference. eg: driving during the day, you won't even know that they are installed and at night the car's personality changes. Feel free to modify to suit you own tastes...
lights on
with brakes pressed on
guys as far as wiring goes, I found it very easy to do and to understand what I was doing. My car is wired differently but the principal is the same.
There are 5 different colored wires in your trunk for the various lights. There could be others but not relevent to this tutorial.
GROUND
LIGHTS ON
BRAKES ON
LEFT INDICATOR
RIGHT INDICATOR
The black wire you find in your trunk is a ground wire.
This can be spliced at any point to attach another ground.
The brown wire is a switched 12V+ and controls all your "lights on" lighting (via the light switch in your car).
These 2 wires (black and brown) are all that we need to concern ourselves with to wire up all our leds.
Your brake light sockets have 3 wires attached to them.
One is ground (This can be temporarily unplugged as it is only a mini spade connection. The other 2 are your low beam 5 watt "lights on" lights and the other is your 21 watt filament for your High beam "brakes on" lights. All I did was splice into the brown wire on one of these 3 wire light looms and wired in a little red (or blue) bullet crimp connector. You will need to wire in a matching male and female pair which plug together. This makes it very quick and easy to bypass the leds and go back to normal if needed. Wire up the 3 gang of positive GOLD wires up to the opposite gender crimp connector so as it can replace the gender of the brown wire going to the globe socket. So basically all we are doing is unplugging the normal brown wire 12v to the traditional globe and diverting it to the led instead. Also do the same with a black ground wire with a crimp connector so the ground of the led (3 SILVER wires) can join to the car's black wire and complete the led circuit. As we have only interfered with one globe the other brown wire will still activate the other normal globe as well as the led now in the other segment. You will need to add a male /female pair and keep the brown to the other globe disconnected.
I always use the female connector for live wiring as there is less chance of a short. The ground can be a male connector.
I use my middle segments for blinkers so I didn't have to cut or join any wires. Do the same for the lights on the other side of the car.
I've probably made it sound more complex than it really is, but we're only dealing with a couple of wires so it should be ok for anybody to attempt!
for those who wish to attempt a hybrid led install, good luck and have fun...
Ammendment 1:
I have added extra aluminum tape (pictures below) in the middle segment to block out all the red lens in the center section. This does not affect the function of the leds but in my case I didn't like the way my yellow blinker glowed yellow and also a bit of red. This didn't make sense. Now I will only have pure yellow light for my blinkers. The same logic applies to those who want "white only" reverse lights. This is personal preference.
Ammendment 2
As I finished my second taillight, I tested it on my 12v battery to find that one of the outside sections wasn't working.
My conclusion was that I must have shorted some wires whilst cutting the excess leds off. I did find what looked like a burnt out led towards the end so I cut that one off as well. Then I tested again and found that they all lit up except the last 2. Now my understanding is that the leds require 4v each and are wired up in bunches of 3 (in parallel). I quickly counted the leds in the end segments which ARE working and counted 60. This is divisible by 3 so I was just lucky every time. If you install the led strips as I have (reasonably tight in the corners, then 60 leds will be perfect for the ends.
I haven't counted the center segment leds but what's the bet they they are also a number divisible by 3. All I am saying is when you cut, always cut a number off divisible by 3. It's not a co-incidence that they come in strips of 72 leds. Anyway, I was short on one segment but I managed to strip away a bit of the rubber from one of my earlier led offcuts and got that working. So I will just use 2 separate strips to complete my last segment. I could be wrong with the above statement but I wouldn't risk it. Hopefully all will be completed by the weekend with more photos added.
cheers, Jim.
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