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Weekend LED musings


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Hello, 84 720KC, my grill had a crack in it, picked up a grill on ebay for $66. There is the orange narrow strip sticker on the front. I took if off, and thought it would be a nice trick to replace it with a same size orange LED strip, either as parking lights or turn signals or park lights or both. I have been looking for automotive LED strip as close as possible to the same size in width and as the strip. I figure two equal length wired in to the turn signals. Looking for "heavy duty" sealed units, most of the LED light strips look delicate.

 

As I am going through the massive amount of LED sellers and choices, I thought about Ratsun. I can't believe this hasn't been done, I am not that kind of smart.

 

Anyone completed this modification? Tips and Tricks?

 

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I don't think I have ever seen that before.

 

Before you go to too much trouble the only color lights allowed on the front of a vehicle other than police, ambulance and emergency vehicles is white and amber. Just putting it out there. You might get away with just removing it but you might get a fine also. See what the laws about this are where you are. A friend of a friend had a PT cruiser and there were dress up LEDs for the two windshield washer squirters. because he was the way he was (biker) he got into a heated argument with the police so they fined him for it and they had to be removed.  

 

Would amber LED strip work?

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That's good intel. One man's orange is another man's amber, I was thinking two (turn signal color) LED amber light strips, long enough to reach the center and spliced into the turn signal wires on each side.

 

So, a weatherproof, sealed LED strip, preferably with a half circle profile, narrow and bright. I would consider a little router work to make it fit. I haven't spend much time researching this idea, as I thought it was a natural modification, especially given the "orange" sticker on the grill. What I thought close enough to "turn signal color". (Using amber colored light strip is not a problem)

 

At this point, the challenge is finding the right LED strip. My only reservation is potential heat a LED strip would create and potential problems of installation in a plastic grill.

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7 hours ago, datzenmike said:

Orange? My bad I thought it was red. Orange is fine.

No worries mate, but I got some bad news about Ratsun. It's full of old guys. When there wasn't an immediate "oh, just do this....." thought I had some new great idea. I didn't. There are hundreds of Youtube videos of detailing how to address it. I picked one here

 

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Those are cool. Last ones I saw the light didn't diffuse very well and you could see the individual LEDs. I added some length of LED strip inside my front amber lenses in addition to the stock bulbs. You can't see the individual LEDs but from the outside they come on instantly and are brighter. The signals are orange plastic, but the LED light is much whiter than the bulbs and they appear yellow now.   

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11 hours ago, datzenmike said:

Those are cool. Last ones I saw the light didn't diffuse very well and you could see the individual LEDs. I added some length of LED strip inside my front amber lenses in addition to the stock bulbs. You can't see the individual LEDs but from the outside they come on instantly and are brighter. The signals are orange plastic, but the LED light is much whiter than the bulbs and they appear yellow now.   

We are on the same page, I too, find the individual LED look, less than great. It might have been mentioned in the video, in this thread, LED channels that diffuse are now a product category. In this instance an abundance of information slows the search.

 

How close is the yellow of the white LED through the orange plastic signal, to the yellow sequential LED strip in the video? Orange/Amber/Yellow, I would just like them to match.

 

This was a Sunday wild hair, I try to stay focused on a running vehicle, but I was moving stuff around, noticed the orange sticker was falling off the new grill and a rabbit hole appeared. Now that this option has proven valid, with parts readily available, I will put it in the que and add it to the list of items to be acquired, if or when deals are found or action is required in the timeline of the build.

 

Returning now to the distributor CAS modification vs new distributor with CAS

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