Gen 1 / 2 LED tail lamp conversion (Very pic intensive)

[MagnaV30]

Original Poster - MagnaV30

Difficulty - Its up there, 7/10, mostly patience.

Time for install - 10 - 16 hours / side

Disclaimer: The Ranger Station.com, The Ranger Station.com Staff, nor the original poster are responsible for you doing this modification to your vehicle. By doing this modification and following this how-to you, the installer, take full responsibility if anything is damaged or messed up. If you have questions, feel free to PM the original poster or ask in the appropriate section of The Ranger Station.com forums.

I had trouble finding anyone who had many aftermarket taillamp assemblys for my Ranger, and none that werent the "Euro style" of which I rather despise.
So, I decided to make my own.
I wanted OEM appearance, and LED draw, life, and responsiveness.

Tools required

- Soldering pencil
- Electric drill / 15 / 64" bit for 5mm LED's
- Hot melt glue gun
- Spray adhesive for trim panels
- Liquid electrical tape
- Zap Straps
- Micro torch / heat gun
- 4 prong trailer connector, PICO part # 1873 BP
- 1' of 6" OD ABS or PVC pipe
- Plastic weld epoxy
- Side cutters
- Needle nose pliers
- Dremel with various cutting / grinding bits
- Screwdriver / prybar

Parts needed

- High silver content solder
- Several hundred LED's
- Couple hundred resistors
- 3/16" dual wall heat shrink tubing
- 1/4" graph paper

Im warning you now, this project takes a fair bit of patience. If you dont think you can hack it, its best not to.

I ordered my LED's and resistors off of Ebay, 1000 LED's 500 resistors. You dont need all of these to complete the project, but I have other things planned for them. (front turn and mark )

I got 30mA 5mm bright white LED's rated at 13,000 millicandela and 180 ohm resistors with a tolerance of 5%.
I wired up the resistors in groups of 4, one resistor, with 4 LED's in series, then parallel with the rest of the LED's in each circuit.
This kept them stable in a 14V environment, without too much current to burn them out.

First thing was to remove the black plastic from the backside of the taillamp that held the Incandescent bulbs and their sockets.
You should end up with something like this

Take your plastic pipe, cut to the length of the lens, and then cut out a section to fit into it.

Cut notches to fit as required

Take 1/4 graph paper, and using your spray adhesive, secure to your pipe on the outside of the curvature.

Drill lots of holes.
I spaced them every other square, the length of the housing from top, to the bottom of the rear reflector.

I also opted to drill 12 holes to make a reverse lamp

Note in the pictures that these LED's are secured with hot melt glue, I found that when this cluster was ran for more than a few minutes, the LED's actually generated enough heat to make the glue tacky. I strongly suggest using the spray glue to secure your LED's into the housing, as I did for the rest of the project.

I did however find that the hot melt was more than adequate for securing wires.

Insert and glue your LED's.... Lots... and lots... of LED's...
128 for this section on mine...

Kinda looks like a porcupine huh?
Other side

Start soldering your circuits.
I made six rows as marker, 10 as stop / turn.
I started at the top with mark, then next two S/T, Mark, and repeated until the last row at the bottom was mark.

Even the woman got involved in this one

Everything lit, checking for any failures

With no failures, coat the exposed wires with liquid electrical tape, preferably a couple coats for good measure.

Wire up your pigtail for your disconnect (this is where that 4 prong trailer connector comes in, allowing you to take the lamp off if required)

Heat shrink these connections

Clean up your wires, and glue them down

Glue the ABS / PVC pipe into the lens, and allow to cure.

Now your ready to wire the other end of that trailer connector into the truck side of the lighting harness, and install your lamp.

Make sure to fold down the LED's near the edges of the housing (near the mount screw holes) as they might make contact with the truck when installed and cause you headaches....

Reverse

Marker

Stop / Turn

All

Video of light in action

 

[Colin]

Very cool.

 

[MountainMike]

Way cool. I thought this is going to be a bulb swap but this is the coolest set of tails I've ever seen.

 

[87xlranger]

Wow, What a GREAT write-up, I just may have to do this on my Truck !

Troy.

 

[RobbieD]

Very nice work. A little Jack Daniels sure helps with the patience part.

 

[Andres629]

Holy carp! That's probably the most intense light upgrade I've ever seen!

 

[MagnaV30]

Best part IMO, is that they look stockish, but are different enough to make those paying attention do a double take.

Thank you all for the positive feedback.

Rest assured, I will make a write up for when I do the front mark and turn.... Might even throw some LED's in the reflector up there...

 

[JoshT]

Damn dude you beat me to it! I was planning to start a similar mod after I get my 84 back up and running. Now I wish I hadn't waited, because that looks great. Any chance that you could throw up a simple wiring diagram and maybe a more lit picture of the back of your assembled unit?

 

[MagnaV30]

I most certainly will. Ill do that when I make the other one the weekend after this one.
Would make it this weekend, but helping a friend with his jeep since his front axle is beyond FUBAR.

When I do, Ill post in this thread, just to keep it simple.

 

[Daringo]

That's insane! I think you should make Christmas light decorations for a living!

 

[jeremycbenson]

thats sweet and sick at the same time.

 

[MagnaV30]

First sunny and really bright day in a while, light output for brake and turn a touch low for me. Its as if the lenses were tinted a bit.
Im tweaking the design. Same principles, different mounting and more LED's

 

[odie1969]

Damn you did a awesome job I so impressed by how much work and time and how great these turned out. here are the led converstion I did about about 2yrs ago. http://www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26443

 

[crawlin91]

looks like a lot of work for some tail lights but they look great...I bet you would be pissed if you got rear ended now.