Most of 'em would even flunk the lower standards that were in effect when our old cars were new, too. But there they go again, those bad ol' nasty ol' pesky ol' elitist ol' facts poking ugly holes in beautiful theories.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

thanks uncle dan for your wise and up to date counsel. thought there might be some improvement in the advisability of using led and halogen tail lights. however bottom line says safe visability issues remain with both . article i read seems to have mistakes in it. think ill stick with 1156 bulbs for now. on the flu- if its too late for a flu shot, try chloraseptic throat spray . thanks again bob f

The worst of it: I did get a flu shot! This just happens to be one of those varieties not covered by the shot. Or it's a non-flu virus. Doctor called it a "respiratory virus", but it involved fever, sweats, major-league body aches including a weird stabbing one where my left toes meet my foot bones, and last time I checked my left foot isn't part of my respiratory system, so I'm betting on flu.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

An alternative with a side benefit:

A bit of house cleaning will help your rear lights look brighter. I recently removed tail light lenses, cleaned them, the metal housing, and painted one of the housings with silver paint as it would not clean up.

The gaskets had become dry, allowing a lot of fine dust to enter the housing. When car is on the move a low pressure area develops in the cabin depending on various window positions. I noticed when driving my rag top I could always smell exhaust fumes, I suspect the 340 square tip exhaust pipes don’t help with fume control dumping inboard of sides of car. Smelling fumes lead to renewing trunk gasket, and correcting a poorly fitting trunk lid. The fumes lessened. Last fall before putting the car up for winter, I repaired a badly cracked lens, fumes almost went away.

This winter I pulled both housings, repaired any cracks with plastic epoxy, fitted new gaskets, reassembled, and before installing in body, put my mouth up to the bulb hole, and sucked in… No air movement. There was a large volume of air passing through the lenses.

Now cleaned internally, the tail lights look to be much brighter, and light reaches full area of lens now that all the built up smutz in in the corners has been removed.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

Why not retrofit newer car LED's to our cars?

I’m not the lighting guy, but the one in the dark behind the curtain reading all this with a flash light. Gleaning from Dan’s musings, the refractive angle determined by placement of lamps filament is critical to proper light wave refraction angles to exit the lens. If filament, or LED placement is off spec to the fixture, optimal light dispersion cannot be achieved.

After market LED lighting devices in particular are mounted in arrays on some sort of board which interrupts the refraction within the fixture that was designed for one filament light source at a precise location.

I suspect that because of poor light wave saturation of a non LED lens, the ability of one to see tail and brake light at angles other than directly or straight on is limited.

I’m sure there is a lot more to it than my understanding, but the gist is; keep factory speck lighting, don’t spend money on LED retrofits because they are ineffective.
Bill

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

Hot Roder’s Corner:
Perhaps that can be done if one could find an assembly that could be grafted into the rear of a forty year old car. A set of Prius tail lights may look cool on late sixties A Body’s by adding a little bit of fin… LOL

Or, those dorky lights Dan suggested back a few posts ago would work… Add round tail lights for the mid-sixties Chevy look. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Just haven some fun here. LOL

Bill

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

If you are lucky enough to own a '63-64 Dart, the taillights are the same size as the universal 4" round truck taillights. I put a set of LED truck taillights on my Dart about 5 yrs ago.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

It seems that if the light refraction is the issue, just make some new lenses out of acrylic, and put the LED boards behind. I've seen too many aftermarket ones that are awesome compared to stock offerings.

I want some Acetylene lights.........

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

You seem not to realize the enormous amount of computational power and moulding precision required for the optics you don't seem to realize are needed. Those needs do not stand aside and get out of the way even for those who really, really don't want them to exist. It may feel like I'm picking on you, and I probably am, but the reason why you don't see the problems is because you don't (yet?) know or understand what you're talking about. It really is just that simple. If you wish to choose to understand the subject, start by reading the linked threads and the threads linked from them.

This, by the way, is not "elitism" (that word doesn't mean what SDale appears to think it means). It's just reality: sometimes there really are right and wrong answers. Experts are called that because they know which is which. I am not an expert in the vast majority of subjects you care to name. I am an expert in this particular subject. When presented with expertise on a subject in which I'm not an expert, I try to listen and learn. Your choice of how to react may differ.
I'm sure you think you have. Many car enthusiasts do. When the real shortcomings are described and explained, they sometimes get all huffy and make uninformed, thoughtless excuses like "They look awesome, and that's enough for me because I see with my eyes, not with, like, whatever that photo-whatzis testing machine thing is." Fortunately for roadway safety, the design, construction, and performance requirements for things like car lights are defined and assessed objectively, not based on subjective impressions of Dan-o, or of me, or of that guy over there on the corner.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Anyone else remember "Apollo 13"?

"OK, folks, we have to make this round filter fit this square hole using only this what's on the table."

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

OK- I will attempt to clarify the problem with LED bulbs by means of an incredibly grossly oversimplified diagram and explanation.



The arrows in the pictures are representative of the photons emitted by the light source and their direction of travel.

To understand the problem with nearly all LED products designed to be retrofitted to any headlight, brake light, side running light, or turn signal assembly originally engineered to used incandescent bulbs, you must first accept as true several facts: (1) there are strictly regulated standards about how bright and where and in what direction the "brightness" goes for every tail lamp (I will use tail lamp as a generic term to refer to all regulated lamp housings, and I will use "beam pattern" as a generic term to refer to the legally required light output pattern); (2) the engineers employed by automobile manufacturers have spent millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours calculating and creating the tail lamp housings that have beam patterns that meet the standards; (3) the beam pattern is controlled by three things: the three dimensional shape of the reflector at the back of the lamp, the shape and refraction properties of the lens, and the distance from and position of the light source in relation to the reflector.

As my oversimplified diagram shows, standard incandescent bulbs have a near omnidirectional, or spherical light output. The only spot that doesn't get light is the stem of the bulb. LED "bulbs" emit light (photons) in a very narrow band, nowhere near the omnidirectional dispersion of an incandescent bulb.

The reflectors and lenses on older tail lamps were designed to meet the beam pattern standard assuming that the light source was an incandescent bulb with the filament in a predefined location in relation to the reflector and lens. See how the arrows not only go directly out the taillight lens, but also bounce back to the reflector and then out the front (that's why it's called the reflector). This "bouncing" or refraction combined with the naturally omnidirectional emission pattern of the incandescent bulb sends the photons in a much wider dispersal than does the LED array.

Changing the light source from an incandescent bulb to an LED array wreaks havoc on the beam pattern because the light photons no longer travel in the path the designers of the lamp housing assumed the light would travel in. Depending on the LED retrofit method, the photons no longer reflect of the reflector, or do so in a much diminished volume, which changes their path in relation to the lens. Further, the majority of the photons no longer strike the lens traveling in paths comparable to the paths engineers presumed the photons would be traveling when the lamp was designed. The end result is a beam pattern that will look bright, in fact brighter than the incandescent bulb, from directly behind the lamp housing, but that, were it to be properly measured, no longer meets the beam pattern standards. Of significant concern is the drastic reduction in light dispersal to the sides of the lamp.

Note the arrows coming out of the lamp housing in the picture I drew above. You can see that with an incandescent bulb, the photons are more widely dispersed to the side as well as directly to the rear of the lamp. Now, see how the photons are concentrated almost directly to the rear of the lamp when the LEDs are used instead of the incandescent bulb. The LED equipped lamp no longer has a beam pattern that meets the legal standards. Thus, by legal definition, the lamp equipped with LEDs is no longer a safe lamp to have operating on a vehicle.

For a simple experiment to demonstrate this principle, get a shiny metal bowl and a flashlight (such as a mag lite) that has an adjustable beam pattern. Set the beam to as broad a pattern as it will go (or, if possible, remove the head unit altogether so there is just a naked bulb shining on the end of the flashlight). Now, turn off the lights, point the cupped side of the bowl at the wall, and shine the wide beam pattern/unshrouded flashlight into the bowl. Note the pattern of the light on the wall.

Now, narrow the beam pattern as far as it will go (if the head unit was removed, reinstall it and narrow the beam pattern), and shine the light into the bowl in rough the same position and direction. Note how the beam pattern has changed. Beam pattern with the wide beam setting on the flashlight is an incandescent bulb and the narrow setting is an LED.

That experiment should demonstrate to you why it is night on impossible to create any sort of LED bulb or array that will ever be abled to be installed in a lamp housing designed for an incandescent bulb and still satisfy the beam pattern standards.

Hopefully this helps. Remember that this is an extremely gross oversimplification, but the principle is the same.

And, no, light bulbs and LEDs don't really have arms, legs, and eyes. And please remember, "Damn it Jim! I'm a lawyer, not an engineer!"

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

[quote]And please remember, "Damn it Jim! I'm a lawyer, not an engineer!"[/quote]

Reed this is obvious, engineers use colored pencils… LOL

You get a “Aâ€￾ for being first to use Photon in this thread, and an “Aâ€￾ for graphics where once again a picture is worth a thousand words.

Bill

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

Just noticed little

Bulb Man
&
LED Man

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes