Custom tail lights

[Big Nate]

I have a set of the true Euro tails that a got from MN6. He had an issue with them leaking like mad. By the way they looked they where very cheaply glued together and there was little to no craftsmanship in them. My plan is to disassemble them and fix the leaking as well as add my own personal touch.


I will be painting the inside all black. The red lens does come out and I am not sure what I will do with that yet. This may turn into a bit of a try it and see what “looks goodâ€￾ kind of project.

I will be posting up what I am doing with my tails. But I want to see what other people think looks good.

So go out there and find a picture of the tails you like and post them here. This could be led or whatever even from other kinds of cars.

 

[Big Nate]

This is along the lines I am going. Only my tails will have no chrome at all around the bulbs even.

 

[dmention7]

I would be worried about painting the reflectors black... unless you get a highly mirrored finish on the black paint, they would probably look terrible when the bulbs lit up. You'd see the bulb in the center and some strange reflections around it, but it wouldn't give the look of having the entire reflector lit up.

 

[Z-licious]

I dunno about that Jay. Note these tails are all black and the reflections don't look wierd. Yes, they are LED but that shouldn't make a huge difference.

 

[Workdawg]

LED makes a big difference for that application. If you went bulbs you would have a single light source, LEDS there are many. Imagine what that would look like with only one LED in each reflector.

 

[dmention7]

The difference Nate, is like Dan said. The tails you have require a reflector in order to capture all the light from the single bulb and shine it back giving the illusion of one large illuminated area. The LED tails you posted make up for that by using an array of small LEDs to create a larger illuminated area.

the contoured reflector used in tail light housings effectively functions as a bunch of small mirrors, each reflecting a small amount of the light from the bulb in order to give the appearance of many small light sources, rather than one bright bulb. If you painted the reflectors black, it would look just like a single bulb stuck in the housing. That is, again, unless you were able to create a highly mirrored black surface. Kind of a black chrome look.

 

[Big Nate]

Well like I said. I am makeing custom tail lights here so I may end up putting an array in there and just run that out to my wireing.

Plus they make LEDS that fold out and in so they fit through a 3/4" hole but fan out inside to a 2" diameter. that may be an option too.

I am going to get a bunch of these leds and see what I like the best.


Also gloss black will reflect just about as good as chrome when done correctly.

 

[dmention7]

If you want to ditch the chrome housing completely, an array of small LEDs would definitely be your best bet. It wouldn't be easy to get that many all positioned right, but it would be pretty cool if you pulled it off!

If you go that route, it might be worthwhile to find a place that sells them bulk and buy a bag of 100 with loose wire ends or something

 

[Big Nate]

They sell them in array form already Jay. Autolumination has them and so does superbrightled. I would just need to trim it to fit in a round opening and I am good.

 

[Big Nate]

here are some pics of the leds i may use.

And I know that they will not fill up the houseing but I am going for my own look and not just being a copy cat.

 

[Z-licious]

Wait, you wanted to paint the part that reflects all the light black too? No I wouldn't do that. I thought you'd only paint the sides in there black, which would look fine.

 

[MN6]

Glad to hear you are putting them to use

For anyone wondering what these tail lights looked like installed...

This is before my car hit on two separate occassions in the back while parked at the end of the parking lot!

I have NA black tails on the car currently.

 

[dmention7]

fixed those links for ya

 

[Workdawg]

Holy balls, crop those pics!

 

[dmention7]

Hehe, that's why I left them as links when I fixed them

 

[MN6]

Jay, if you have not done so already. I would test fit these to your car before getting too involved in modification. I would hate to see you have fit issues after doing all your work. I did get these to fit fairly decent on my car without modifying them, however I believe with a little Dremmel work they would fit better.

 

[Big Nate]

They are for my car. And I am about three coats of paint and total disassembly away from a test fit. but I planed on them not fitting and haveing to mod a bit to make them work.

 

[MN6]

Holy balls, crop those pics!

I thought bigger was always better. I have resized the pics. :fishing1:

 

[MN6]

They are for my car. And I am about three coats of paint and total disassembly away from a test fit. but I planed on them not fitting and having to mod a bit to make them work.

It will be nice to see the end product. I hope they work out for you. I had the same thought about moding them, but changed my mind when I found a set of cheap NA's. I actually have 3/4 of a set of tinted euro's as well. They are the real deal though and not seconds like the black euro's were.