Farewell Incandescent Lighting (96 Talon TSI AWD LED Conversion)

[2GbTalonGuy]

Ill give you a cookie, what better motivation is there then the promise of a cookie?

There is none.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Cookies are too fattening, I need to lose weight.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Time to blow the dust off this thread.

I've got over 700 Red-Orange Lumiled Superflux and over 1200 Amber Lumiled Superflux; should be enough to do all the exterior lights on my car I've also go copper clad board to make my own PCBs; this will give it a nice professional appearance.

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I used my soda blaster to clean all the silver paint off of the inside of the Talon center section, I've still got to do more blasting but this will let me assemble everything at least.

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I took some clear plexiglass and cut it so the Superflux fit over it. I then put some double sided foam tape so it will hold in place.

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LEDs on the plexiglass.

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Bending the legs to make the connections.

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Sitting in the center section, I still need to do some trimming.

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All soldered up and powered up via my 12V power supply.

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Lens on, PWM set to 25% for marker light brightness.

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Full brightness for brake lights.

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What the one section looks like.

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Video:
Talon LED Tail Light Center Section Test - YouTube

I'm hoping to get the other sections for this small area of the center section made and all soldered together tomorrow. The lights will be brighter then this. I'm using Sharp 12V Voltage regulators and they need over 12V to function correctly. Unfortunately my converted PC PSU only puts out 12V so....

More updates as I get more work in.

 

[TurboATM]

oh man,can i send you a set of tails and some cash now?!?!?

 

[2g_420a]

Hey man looks great. Mad props for having the motivation and creativity. Just a heads up in some states they have laws restricting how bright exterior lighting can be, and how many lights are allowed to be mounted. You will have to check the regulations in your area because I am unsure of them in your area. keep up the great work!

 

[EDM95]

That's a nice project. Where did you get your leds from?

 

[Blurred Talon]

oh man,can i send you a set of tails and some cash now?!?!?

, I'd love to help but I need to finish my own first and plus I'm starting a new career as an Industrial Electrician now so I'm pressed for time.

Hey man looks great. Mad props for having the motivation and creativity. Just a heads up in some states they have laws restricting how bright exterior lighting can be, and how many lights are allowed to be mounted. You will have to check the regulations in your area because I am unsure of them in your area. keep up the great work!

Thanks.
Remember I'm in Canada so things are different here. In NL you need a high mount 3rd brake light (I need to make one since my OEM spoiler is gone) and you're lights need to be visible from a certain distance.

My lights will be a bit brighter then normal for increased visibility plus we get a LOT of fog here and I want to make sure people see me in it.

That's a nice project. Where did you get your leds from?

All my LEDs were bought on eBay. They are all factory sealed bricks or bin matched tubes. Search for HPWT and you'll find some. There's a few bricks of red-orange on their right now.

 

[EDM95]

Thanks.

 

[2g_420a]

im sorry man I didnt see you are in canada its great that you are thinking about safety though it would suck to be rear ended in a nice car...

 

[Blurred Talon]

Thanks.

Welcome. Good luck with whatever project you decide to tackle.

im sorry man I didnt see you are in canada its great that you are thinking about safety though it would suck to be rear ended in a nice car...

Np and thanks.

I've got some more work done tonight but I'm gonna hold off on updates till I get some more progress.

Made some more progress.
I got the 2 other strips ready and soldered. I just need to solder the resistors on and power leads on one of them.

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Here's to of the strips done and ready to go.

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I also started working on my license plate lights. I cut open the lights so I have a flat surface to mount the board on.

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Then I put my Nichias on and soldered them all in place.

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Back of the board, ignore the boogery looking soldering job in the lower corner.

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This is where it stopped though, for some reason only the last LED in both strings is lighting up. I'm at a loss as to why this is happening. I've checked them with my multimeter; there's voltage and continuity across the whole thing so what's wrong with it?!?

 

[Blurred Talon]

Fixed the license plate lights, I had both negative and positive connected on the LED thus shorting it out. D'oh!

Here's the license plates lights all done now.

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Mounted into the housing. I still need to glue them in place.

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The license plate LEDs are Nichia NSPWR60CSS-K1 C0 bin. They're wired in series parallel 3 per string with a 56ohm 1/4W resistor at the end of each brench, total of 2 brench so 6 per light. Current is 50mA. They will be voltage regulated at 12V with a Sharp VReg but I still need to set the Vreg up.

Here they are all lit up.

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Moving back to the LED center section.
I got the boards finished. There's over 60 LumiLED Superflux HPWT-DH00 LEDs used in these strings. They are wired in series parallel, 4 LEDs per branch with a 27ohm 1/4W resistor at the end of each expect for 2 branches of 3 LEDs which have a 68ohm 1W resistor at the end.
Finished boards.

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I had to cut out the center section so they can sit deeper. I will likely have to make it deeper and rebuild it all so they light it up correctly. I'm using Popsicle sticks so the center section retains it's shape while cut.

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Here's the boards laid in place.

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Lit up again, ignore the dead spot, this is why I need to make it deeper so the boards will sit correctly.

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Once again, here's a video:
Talon LED Tail Light Center Section Test 2 - YouTube

 

[greanbeans]

cant wait to see the finished product its looking good so far

 

[dsmAB]

Looks nice man, i wish i had the time and motivation to get that done hahahahah
Good job!!!!!

 

[Blurred Talon]

Thanks guys. I'm off on Friday so maybe I can get some more done then.

 

[2GbTalonGuy]

Looking great buddy.

 

[talon1990TSi]

looking good cant wait to see them on the car.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Thanks guys.

Made some more progress this week.
Cut out the rest of the lower part of the center section. Used Coffee stir sticks to hold it together and aligned.

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Made a template so I could get an idea of board design.

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Then I cut it out. I'm most likely going to draw this in Eagle and NOT use perf board. It would be a straight line of LEDs on the lower part just sanded/ground down to the right shape, until the housing gets bigger then I can have a bigger array.
I plan to start drawing the PCBs tomorrow not.

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[Blurred Talon]

My old power supply decided to die after 4 years of faithful service. I had a spare that I modified again. This time I included a 3V and 5V and put jacks on top to make it easier to use.

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I glued the license plate boards back into their housing and glued the backs of the boards to water proof them.

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I also glued the boards for the dome lights into the dome light housing.

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Then I made a small 6 LED board for my cargo lights.

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Tonight I might make my foot well lights and glove box light.

 

[Bud92gsx]

Why not just buy replacement leds?

 

[ShizzySupra]

Lots of work going into this. Good job.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Because they aren't as bright nor perform as good as actual quality LEDs. These will also last much much longer.

 

[Bud92gsx]

Um I might beg to differ.I just got alll new leds for every exterior light except the license plate light.Although I have not put them in yet.I hope they are bright.So If they are bright when I get them in I will let you know.The ones your got are probably really bright.

 

[Arthris]

Im just wondering why are you using resistors instead of a Voltage regulator? You can get very decent regulators for almost nothing. And no matter what the input voltage is itll output the same voltage. Ive thought of doing something very similar with both my Rx7 and my Talon but would use a regulator instead

 

[Blurred Talon]

Um I might beg to differ.I just got alll new leds for every exterior light except the license plate light.Although I have not put them in yet.I hope they are bright.So If they are bright when I get them in I will let you know.The ones your got are probably really bright.

Most PNP bulbs are very cheaply made or made with lower quality LEDs. Plus no voltage regulation is a big no no, your car's charging system jumps all over the place; 12-14.5V.
Plus I like building things myself and take great pride in the work I've done. I can design everything to my liking.

Also, these will be much brighter then any PNP bulb.

Im just wondering why are you using resistors instead of a Voltage regulator? You can get very decent regulators for almost nothing. And no matter what the input voltage is itll output the same voltage. Ive thought of doing something very similar with both my Rx7 and my Talon but would use a regulator instead

You still need resistors unless you are dropping the input voltage a lot. I am using Sharp 12V LDO regulators also, I just haven't wired them up yet.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Look what showed up yesterday.
6 Cree XM-Ls and 4 heat sinks.

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Mounted to the heat sink.

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I got them off an eBay seller who had them on sale for the lowest I've ever seen so I bought a bunch. These are high powered LEDs and can output 1000 lumens.
2 of these will be be my reverse lights (maybe 4 if I can fit them but that's doubtful). I'm also thinking about using 1 each for DRLs but we'll see how that goes. I'm not sure there is enough space in the bucket nor the housing so we'll see.
I need to get some drivers so I can play around with these. I'm thinking I might just need some DX drivers to experiment with since they are cheap; however before this all goes into the car they will be replaced with something much better (Shark Buck from the Sandwich Shoppe most likely).

I also soldered up my glove box light. 3 Nichias, more then enough for the glove box light.

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I've got exactly 5 Nichia left so I'm going to get some resistors tomorrow to make them into my foot well lights. I'll have 5 total per side.
That's it for now.