I'll share my plan and see if you guys can help me pick diodes to make it work well.
My current front turn signals are in the ABS skirt on the front bumper. I'm fabbing a steel bumper, so those will go away. I want to move my turn signal up to the side marker housing which has an empty reflector cavity. There isn't enough room to put a 3157 bulb (LED or otherwise) so I want to do this:
In the picture above, I want to cut out the red rectangle and drill it to make it a breadboard and solder in some diodes. Then on the back I'll drool some gorrila glue and stick on another piece of ABS slightly larger to use as a flange to glue it back in place.
How do I go about choosing LE diodes for the right output? Since they will now be next to the headlights, they should be a nice bump up from 3157-type lumens. I fully understand that (without the R&D and budget) it might not work at all... the shape of the reflector, the location, the whole idea might be a bust, but LEDs are cheap and I have a spare set of housings. If it all fails I can just put some generic housings in the bumper I fabricate.
Oh... and I know someone will notice this:
The interwebs photo I linked of the side marker housing shows chrome plating on the back. My factory buckets don't have that, they're just grey ABS. It is chrome plated on the inside, and I plan on countersinking the holes to make sure there isn't any conductive stuff near the holes.
what car is this, Curtis? I need more info to picture what you are doing.
I see two potential problems with the plan you've laid out, the first is that the metallized plastic reflector surface just might short out the bare pins on your LEDs, and the second is that the whole plan may be too complicated. Instead of making your own breadboard of LEDs, maybe try to find an off-the-shelf automotive LED that will go into the cavity through one large hole? Look into interior lights and "peanut" bulb setups. Those are some tiny bulbs that should fit.
GameboyRMH said:
I see two potential problems with the plan you've laid out, the first is that the metallized plastic reflector surface just might short out the bare pins on your LEDs, and the second is that the whole plan may be too complicated. Instead of making your own breadboard of LEDs, maybe try to find an off-the-shelf automotive LED that will go into the cavity through one large hole? Look into interior lights and "peanut" bulb setups. Those are some tiny bulbs that should fit.
The metalicized plastic issue should be addressed. See my second post.
I'm concerned that an off the shelf LED might not be bright enough right next to the headlight.
I think a "peanut" multi-die LED would be fine, those are commonly used for parking lights or indicators:
What about mounting a turn signal in the new bumper?
GameboyRMH said:
I think a "peanut" multi-die LED would be fine, those are commonly used for parking lights or indicators:
I'd have to look, but I don't think there is enough space even for that. I'm guessing there is about 1/2" of depth, and until you add the height of that bulb to the protrusion of the socket, I don't think it will fit. It also may not be bright enough.
Wally said:
What about mounting a turn signal in the new bumper?
That is the fallback plan if this doesn't pan out. I actually have some of those from a trailer project. They're the kind where you cut the hole and then they snap in a rubber grommet. For the sake of "sleekness" I would like to use the reflector cavity.
The new bumper will also have two LED off-road lamps and I thought about running a second circuit into those with some Amber LEDs for signals, but it technically won't be legal... not far enough apart for DOT. I doubt anyone will care, but with my luck some inspection tech will notice.
do you have room behind the side maker cavity to drill through it and put all the wiring and guts behind it and just leave the LED sticking into the area behind the lens? It's basically a Ford Ranger with different lights and badging. I would get some ranger turn signals, take a dremel to them to fit the space behind the lenses on your Mazda's side markers, and combine the two
thought about that but the grille and side marker housings are different in the Mazda. I could get the grille as well, but then it will just look like a Ford and I find them to be a wee bit uglier in the front. The reflector cavity is so skinny because of how the grille, headlight buckets, and radiator support are made. There isn't much room behind that reflector to expand. My first thought was to take some 1-1/4 PVC or ABS pipe, cut it at 45* and epoxy it to the back at an angle, then put an end cap on it and cut out a hole for a 3157 socket. I think it will hit the headlight housing if not also the grille support.
I've spent the last google and a half looking for some custom LED panels I could glue in but didn't really find any. Diodes are 50 cents each, I just don't want to go through all this work to find that they aren't bright enough.
I don't think this will be that hard, so follow me for a minute and educate me.
How would I go about researching diodes and how many lumens I would need if I were to follow my original idea?
So a typical 3157 bulb is around 400 lumens on the brighter filament. 800 enough? 1000? My brake lights are advertised at 1200 lumens, but that's probably a lie, so I'll assume they put out more like 1000.
Can I assume that lumens are additive? So if I do 20 diodes that are each 50 lumens I'll get 1000?
I am unsure of LED Lumins are additive, some of the brigtest LEDs I have seen are single diode. In thinking about the project I am currently doing to my disco, have you considered somehow inserting an LED "Rock light" into the housing? The only trouble would be getting both parking light AND flasher out of one of those, but then you do not want an 800 lumen parking light.
You really need to get behind the headlight to see what kind of room you have, if you have it, your idea with the PVC pipe might work best.
Another option: You mentioned putting in a steel bumper. Can you salvage the plastic parts of the original bumper that house the turn signals into some sort of "spoiler" or "filler" piece that would allow you to keep the stock turn signals?
If you search on evilbay for "5630 smd injection" you'll get a pile of the option I would recommend. Pick the model you think fits the best and just drill holes for the individual leds and glue the whole works to the back of your housings. I recommend "Seal All" for the glue, I like it's semi flexibility for stuff like that.
I had seen those but dismissed them. After researching, it looks like they'll do about 50 lumens per diode, so if I can fit about 12 (four 3-packs) in that bucket, it might be the hot ticket. Thank you.
I think I would look into the feasibility of swapping in Ranger parts.
If you have already done that, then disregard.
I thought about that, but A) I don't like how they look, B) It's more involved than one would think. It's grille, headlights, fascia panel, side markers, and the radiator support (where it screws on) is a bit different. Ranger guys say you can modify the Mazda radiator support to hold a Ranger grille but its a little ghetto (drilling holes and using 4" screws or something). Suffice it to say, it is likely less work to solder in some LEDs than it is to swap grilles.
Illumaestetic sells what you need. A bit more expensive than rolling the dice on chinese eBay LEDs, and they've done tons of retrofits. I'll probably buy what I need from them when I get to my LS400 taillight build.
https://www.illumaesthetic.com/
Good luck, and share your progress!
Cooter
Dork
1/31/19 11:40 a.m.
In reply to Curtis :
I figured you probably thought it through, but I like to toss the obvious out there, just in case. I wasn't sure if just the side markers could be made to work during my Googley Image Comparison™
