I've seen the light

I've always been keen to use modern technology to improve the lighting on my cars, I don't think I've ever had standard lighting for long on a car. Usually that's been fitting relays and higher wattage lamps.
There's never been much choice for upgrading the sidelights so I was quite interested when I started seeing LED lamps coming down in price.
I also liked the look of those modern LED indicators that are crisp and instant as they come on.
For nearly a year now I have had an HID kit sat on the shelf waiting for me to get round to fitting it, I don't have all the lenses I want to do that yet.
So last week, in a moment of weakness and I dare say idleness, I took a surf and ended up with a set of LED lights. Somehow I managed to mess up the order and ended up with a bit of an odd assortment - I didn't want to do the indicators until I had figured out how to ensure they actually work! LED indicators and old school flasher units don't play well together, apparently the LEDs are such low resistance that they don't work properly with those old flasher units. The fix seemed to be wiring in resistors but that just feels like a fudge. I have now found a purpose designed LED flasher so I will try that at a later date.
Anyway, back to the LEDs. I had sidelights, stop/tail, some reversing lights (or indicators) and some festoons - that's where I messed up! The festoons were for the indicators on the B posts and one for the interior light, well the festoons are the wrong size for the interior light and of course the indicators don't work (Duh, I knew that so why did I order then this time!?!)
Brain fade!!

Right, so I tried the sidelights in the front to see what they were like. You know, I'm not entirely sure! I mean I like the "look" bit I'm unconvinced they are actually brighter (as these are supposed to be) but I do like the crisp light. It's quite hard to take photos of lights but here you go.

From Jason's Blog


Here's a closer look at the LED side

From Jason's Blog


and the other side with a filament lamp in it

From Jason's Blog


Here's the end result

From Jason's Blog


Here are the rears, first the reversing lights as standard

From Jason's Blog


and now with an LED

From Jason's Blog


This is the one that's quite hard to photograph, here are the rear sidelights as standard with a filament lamp in it,

From Jason's Blog


and now with an LED in it, I'm not convinced this is an improvement but from some angles it is

From Jason's Blog

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