Radioflyer97's How-To Post #3: Customized LED Halos

Parts needed:
- about 2' of Small gauge wire (I used 24ga stranded thin)
- (4) 5-packs of 470 ohm .5 watt resistors ($4 at radioshack)

Tools needed:
- Voltmeter
- Wire stripper
- Solder/solder gun
- Scissors
- Phillips head screwdriver
- black marker

Here's the procedure for 1 light:

1. remove the light from the bumper
2. remove the rear panel from the light itself: remove the 4 phillips head screws and use scrape away the silicone seal from the panel on the back. NOTE: be gentle when removing the screws or you will damaged the plastic. Then slowly pry it loose with your hands (no extra leverage is nessicary) It should look like this:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1613.jpg

3. Cut the 2 white wires in the center as close to the circuitboard as possible. One is positive and one is ground. To find out which is which, strip about 1/4" off each, go back to the car and plug it back into the socket. Turn on the parking lights and use the voltmeter to identify the poar and ground. use the sharpie to label the ground wire.

4. You'll see 4 wires going to the sides of the light: red, black, yellow and orange. each of the 4 LEDs gets it's own pair of wires (there are 2 per side) Cut the wires on both sides as close to the circuitboard as possible and strip 1/4" insulation from them. The poliarity is as follows:

red and orange are power wires
yellow and black are ground wires

twist the black and yellow ends together and solder. Install resistors on the ends of the orange and red wires. Use your 24ga wire to join the power wires on both sides and the ground wires for both sides. Then connect them to the main power/ground white wires you labeled earlier.

5. Make sure your connections are soldered and insulated with electrical tape then test. Make sure your socket is installed in the correct direction.

the end result:
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/new%20vette%20pics/CIMG0833.jpg

Radioflyer97's How-To Post #4: Thru-screen Foglights

I mainly decided to do this because well, i'm a light-a-holic. My foglights were sitting behind my Zo6 screens and the output pattern was all funky. I needed the screens to keep junk from flying into my vararam.

note: this can ONLY be done with Hella's Micro DE fogs. The OEM fogs are too large to fit here.

The plan: extend the foglight mounting bracket roughly 4-5" and cut a hole in the ZO6 screen material so the fog light sits in this hole.

Note that I"m using Hella Micro DE fogs which have similar but not exactly the same dimentions as a OEM corvette Foglight.

Part I: I noted the position of the foglight in the stock location and measured that I wanted it about 5" further forward. I used 1/8"x3/4" aluminum bar and 8 bolts to extend the OEM mount.
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1558.jpg

You will need to cut 2 slits in the foglight shroud to get the extension to fit. A dremel saw bit (the one that looks like a drill bit) is perfect for this. You could remove the shroud and make precise measurements, but eyeballing is perfectly acceptable for this cut.

Part II: I noted the position of the re-mounted fog light and cut the screen material so that the foglight sits in the opening. I also had to trim off about 2"x1" of the screen's plastic frame on the bottom for enough clearence.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1549.jpg

Part III: Using black door edge molding ($2.50 at O'reilly's) I shaped I over the edges of the cut hole. In this tight of a bend, the molding holds together at the opening even better and the pressure of the screens mounted makes it even more secure.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1556.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1550.jpg

Note the right side (OEM location) versus the left side (custom location) The Right side loses a good deal of foreground light, has a grid shadow in the light pattern and every time you want to clean the lens, you have to remove the screen. The Left side however has no light obstruction and cleaning is easily done.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1551.jpg

Finished:
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1559.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1560.jpg

The lights were a tight fit, but did fit with no special trimming of the bumper required. Entire project took roughly 2 hours.

Final result: (note, these are 55w 6000k HID)
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/New55w.jpg
Cutoff pattern
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/output2.jpg

Radioflyer97's How-To Post #5: Super Bright Revers lights:

(note, the revers light housing being used is a Adjure diamond plate housing with SMOKED lenses. Those of you with clear lenses will see substantially better results)

Here are the contenders:
*enthusiastic announcer's voice*

In the the right corner weighing in at a whopping $8 per pair to the wallet is the 2357 Extended life incandescent. Many consider this to be the upgrade. to the OEM 2057 or 1157 bulbs. The 2357 features not one but 2 filaments.

In the left corner, the challenger: a 9005 Sylvania silverstar 9005 high beam halogen. This bulb is being mounted with a 9005 stamped steel headlight bulb mount. This bulb is often part of the first headlight upgrade for any GM dual-bulb vehicle.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/thecontenders.jpg

(crowd goes wild)

Round 1 (open bulb test)
for this test, removed the left 2357 bulb and stripped the wires to provide contact points for the 9005. (i could have cut them but i wanted the procedure to be completely reversible)

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/openbulbs.jpg

as you can see the 9005 is significantly brighter drowning out the 2357 even though it's further away from the camera.

Round II (mounted test)
In order to secure the 9005 steel bulb mount, I had to shave away a small section to allow room for the plastic twist lock of the stock 2358 mount.
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/9005bulbmount.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/Mounted.jpg

The 9005 again provides noticeably more output than the 2357

Round III (output against wall test) *knockout*
I used a small piece of cardboard to block out each light while i took a picture of the other's output:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/2357output.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/9005output.jpg

I"ll let you guess which one was the winner.

And for those of you worried about heat? My conclusion is that you can leave the 9005 running as long as you want. I let the bulbs run constantly between tests (which happened to be the entire length of Lynard Skynard's "Freebird".....which is also the same amount of time it would take if you let the Wife or S.O. back the car down a standard length driveway :lol: )

I will be securing the steel mounts to the backup plate with high-temp silicone.

For even more light, see phaze II

Phaze II: HID reverse lights:

In case you people haven't figured it out, I am just the person who'se crazy enough to do something outragous to my car if it can improve how somthing functions (especially lighting)

In page 4 of the above thread, I modified my backup lights to use 9005 Bulbs by gluing the 9005 headlight socket to the reverse light socket. This made me have possibly the brightest backup bulbs ever built for a car.

....HOWEVER, the "possibly" made me somewhat insecure. So i took it a step further:

Hmm....what's that behind where the license plate goes?
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1591.jpg

Yup, you guessed it: HIDs in the revers lights (and this is with Richard's Smoked lenses :cool: )

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1592.jpg

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/radioflyer1986/CIMG1593.jpg

it's worth noting that the new revers lights can drown out the Mercury work lights i was using to install them.

Bwa Ha Ha....:willy: :willy: :willy:

I have since run one of my many switches as a trigger for the reverse light relay so i can activate them manually.