Some of you may be VCOA members and will soon get their Mar/Apr '07 issues of Rolling. This post is meant to supplement my article (pp 34-5 & 37) in that issue and further clarify (as in "one picture is worth a thousand words") the directions in that article.
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First, however, I should point out that I am grateful to Jan Nystrom (the editor) and to VCOA for publishing my article. This post is in no way intended to circumvent their intents and rights of the publication -- if anything, it should increase interest in BrickBoard members to become VCOA members and get copies of Rolling. However, there are space limitations for photos in any published article, and the photos included here in this post are mainly (if not entirely) to include those left out of the Rolling publication in order to, as noted above, supplement and clarify, if not also to pique the interest, in readers.
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To explain to those, and pique the interest of those others who don't, get Rolling, the article explains in detail how I converted my car to LEDs in the front and rear lamps. This was done for a variety of reasons discussed in the article, including (1) faster brake lighting, (2) eliminating the dreaded "sedan taillight syndrome" of multi-faceted ailments, and (3) because I like having brighter and yet lower-temperature lights, especially with LEDs' pronounced distinctiveness.
However, because I have been greatly disappointed with all manner of substitute "LED bulbs" available commercially, I did this by hand-soldering large arrays of LEDs (e.g., 180 on front turn signals, 90 on rear lights) onto perf boards (along with diodes, resistors, and voltage regulators -- all explained fully in the Rolling article).

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I retained my desired DRL functions in the front lights, as seen here. The photo shows both the DRL (upper) and turn signal (lower) lighted -- parking lights are just a dimmer version (fewer LEDs lit) of the DRLs.




This was accomplished by building the perf boards into the lamp housings, as in the following:




[Note that the black "stain" seen on the circuit boards above is a waterproofing coat ("Liquid Tape") that slightly seeped through the perf holes from the wiring side of the board and onto the sides (not the front) of some LEDs -- its appearance in this photo is a refracted view (through the LEDs) of its presence on the sides but isn't on, and doesn't interfere with the light output from, the front lens of the LEDs.]


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As for the taillights, the following shows, first, the BRAKE lights (taillights are also on, though). The LEDs are already installed on the right side (along with the center mounted lamp in the rear window), while the conventional incandescent bulbs are still on the left side for comparison:




To compare just the taillights (not brakes) and reverse or backup lights, again the LEDs are on the right, and the original incandescents are on the left:




And this was accomplished by building arrays on multiple circuit boards, one for each cell of the taillight housings. The boards are shown here, but have not yet been glued in place, nor hard-wired to the car's wiring harness -- this picture is just to show how nicely they fit into each cell after the OEM bulb sockets were cut out (with a dremel) leaving large rectangular holes to fit the perf boards:




And to handle side-lighting in the taillights, clarifying the article's verbal description, this shows (in one of the rectangular cutouts) how I placed sideways an additional small perf board's array of LEDs on the inboard edge of the lamp to face outboard, to illuminate the side marker light. Note that you are mainly viewing the freznel inner surface of a taillight lens:




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An important word about converting the flasher unit (turn/hazard relay or module): the published article left out an important caveat from my manuscript, that the conversion to an electronic unit (specifically a two-prong, EL12 type) is only necessary in '93 models. While it's necessary to convert to any (non-burned out bulb indicating) electronic unit (to keep the flasher speed slow despite lower current draw), the rewiring to a two-prong (from a three-prong) type discussed in the published article is, I believe, only necessary for '93 models. I believe that earlier cars (-'92) don't need this rewiring -- something major changed in '93, as any "look-up" book shows a conventional flasher up to '92, whereas '93 models aren't shown. I think that if you have a -'92 car, you can try an LED compatible 3-prong flasher first.
Also, in '93, the flasher is on the right (passenger) side of the center console, whereas in earlier cars, it's on the left (driver) side.

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Finally, the published version of my manuscript left out some physilogical clarification of the significance of the increased lighting intensity of my LED arrays compared to the original incandescent lamps. The published article read that, for instance, that the turn signals are four times brighter, and the taillights are 15 times brighter, and the brake lights are six times brighter. However, some physiological clarifications are in order, but unfortunately were edited out, so I want to add here, that for these statements, the increases were measured based on a photo light meter on the EV scale, which is just a measure of the increased flux of photons, whereas humans' eyes do not respond proportionally to such measures of brightness -- our physiology responds more on a log scale of sensitivity, so that it takes orders of magnitude increases to ascertain a mere doubling of intensity. In other words, I am not claiming that the lights seem to be 15, or even 4, times as bright; I merely claim that they seem much brighter.


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I hope that all this helped.

Regards to all