08' FX4 LED tail light retrofit w/ trailer parts!

[racinranger]

Alright i been mulling this around a bit before so i decided to dive into and bought a set of knockoff aftermarket oem 08 headlamps scene here -

you can also see the trailer replacement walmart 24$ led panels. I forgot to take pics of the lights before i hacked out the LED board.

LED board ready to be mounted up.

In this picture you can see the tail lamp cut out in the rear to aprox 2.25x3.25inches. I used a rotozip to cut out the rear of the reflector with no problem at all.

Here is the Led board mounted into the rear of the housing. Its a friction fit but i used Fusor Plastic body panel welder for installing flares/panels in body shop application. i think it will hold.

Here's the pair of them after 24 hours dried and ready for installation. The 3 wires will be soldiered the factorry tail light harness after the plugs are cut off. I will also be installing some 15ohm- 50w resisters to slow down the blinkers. Not seen in the picture.

Running lights with them on the truck.. I like the look you can definitly tell there LED, also the blinkers have that trademark snap on/off Light output. it just looks sharper than a bulb would.

Total cost - replacement lenses 65$ on ebay
- Fusor panel weld 20$
- walmart trailer lamp led kit 25$
- 2 hours time free$
- Resistors on ebay 15$ plus shipping

so all toll it cost me 120ish$'s, if you dont mind shreding the reflector set you have cause your sure you wont make a mistake then it can be done for about 60$ total.

 

[grey ghost]

awsome job maybe make a vidio of the flasher so we could see the difrance??

 

[racinranger]

Im gona make a blinker video when my nikons battery recharges. i barely got hte last shot before the camera died.

 

[racinranger]

I forgot to say that this mod i know works for 06+ rangers. Im thinking it will work for anything really as long as it has single bulb stop/turn/running lights
If you have a 2 bulb setup it will be alittle different

 

[htjunkie1]

Shouldn't this work also if you have the 3 bulb set-up?

 

[racinranger]

Yea it'll work but you'd be eliminating 1 bulb discarding that bulbs ground side and wiring the running lamp hot lead to the 3rd wire on the LED board. Or you'd be needing 2 boards per lense

 

[dusto2]

wow that looks really cool never thought of this one i like that alot gives me ideas for my gen2

 

[racinranger]

I only decided to do this after looking into the available tail light options and not wanting to have a rice burner alteeza tail light. Even the toned down black housing ones have the gay little red disks and shit in them and besides there cheap and never REALLY fit like oem ones do. I like the look of the translucent red 08' tail lamps

 

[RangerJustin]

Woah, I need to get some more knowledge of resistors and such, that looks badass! Any chance of getting a pic of what the LED lights looked like when you bought them?

 

[racinranger]

The kit came exactly like this, only i bought them from walmart for around 25$ not the insane west marine price of 75$

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wc...true&storeNum=5005&subdeptNum=17&classNum=589

 

[RangerJustin]

The kit came exactly like this, only i bought them from walmart for around 25$ not the insane west marine price of 75$

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wc...true&storeNum=5005&subdeptNum=17&classNum=589

Sweet, thanks for the link!

 

[PlumCrazy]

I was just looking into doing that with a set of 2000 tail lights and using the rubber mouted oval LED lights (like the ones on my tool box)

-plumcrazy

 

[Jon581]

you know they do make LED tail lights just like the ones you made or you can buy LED bulbs that work well but both are pretty expensive. by the way awesome job on the home made ones.

 

[racinranger]

Led bulbs are in my mind a copout/sacrafice. You get none of the benifits of clearer signals/brighter markers that LED's produce. Stuffing a round cluster of 8 or 12 LED's into your stock socket isnt going to produce the large surface area of an LED board and in some cases will be less bright because they lack proper reflectors.

On the other hand, they do make LED tail lights but i havent found any that wernt all ricerish, or had some gay oval red lenses and shit. I wanted an OEM appearance.

 

[Jon581]

for $60 i can buy LED bulbs and have LED tail lights besides the stock bulb does just fine so i figure LED bulbs with 10 or 12 LED bulbs can't do any worse and they last forever. but yeah the whole LED tail light for our year truck don't look right