just wondering what mcd rating everyones LED taillights are. Reason being, if you havent noticed, the 95-96 taillights seem a little darker or thicker than 97-99 so i was thinking maybe using 13000mcd LED's. anyone think this might be too bright or even too dull? just wondering before i purchase the goods to embark on this project. thanks....

 

anyone? thanks

 

cmon someone knows

 

depending how you make them will determine what MCD led you will need. 13,000mcd sounds like it might be overkill, but then again it might look hot at night. I say just go for the 13,000 and see what happens.

Im pretty sure Tony made his with 10,000mcd leds.

Ant

 

I have 5000........Pic in my avatar is day time pic around 4-5.

 

5,000 is pretty much enough for me. My reverse are 10,000 though and they are pretty damn bright.

13,000 might be little too much I guess, but try it...

 

DONT USE WHITE LEDS! "White" LEDs tend not to acctually be white (usually bluish or purplish) especially when you get high MCD ones. When I was making mine I expiremented with some white ones and it made the light look very PINK. I decided to go with the most powerful red LED I could find to maintain the color and was able to find 5000 MCD one on ebay for very cheap. I have about 70 LEDs in each of the 4 housings and it is more than bright enough. Another thing to watch out for is the MCD ratings on Ebay are often not true.

The tails may appear a little orange in color in the pictures this is because the exposure on the camera. They are red as hell in real life. These are just the parking lights. The brake lights are more than twice as bright!

 

I see you have all 5 raws lit. Did you use different resistors and relays to lit LEDs brighter when you hit brakes?

Great job by the way, I like 97-99 housing way more than 95-96.

And that is true, my 10,000 white mcd do have bluish tint to them. I would use 5000 if I did them again. What mcd for whites you have?

 

jm

i really like the amber in all four housings and the white in all four housings

so when you have your turn signal on both housings on that side flash right?


if so thats really nice first time ive seen something like this - if i could get my hands on some red clears for a 95 i would love to do that too


keep up the good work

 

I used 5,000mcd red, 4,000mcd amber, and i think 8,000mcd white.

 

HOLY **** those taillights look good jm5464

 

Thanks,

All five rows are lit for the parking and brake lights. I used some high current resistors and diodes to make the LEDs get brighter when I hit the brakes. I believe my reverse lights are 6000 or 7000 MCD. It took me a long time to find some that were the color I liked (as white as possible). The MCD does not necessarily determine the color though it mostly depends on how they make the LEDs.

Both housings on each side flash as blinkers.

Heres a pic of the resistor and diode boards:


A pic of the rows of LEDs:


If your interested in how I made them I have some in progress pics at this link:

http://www.bassmintaudio.com/maxima/...ght%20project/

 

Where did you get your parts? Specificly the plastic parts you used to mail the LEDs into those nice rows.... Could you explain the wiring?

-Michael

 

Holy cow.... that is some beautiful and neat job. I thought about doing second set of tails where same LED would go brighter or dimmer under different resistor load, but did not have time to turn research into a project. Great props on having that done.

Can you describe a picture how you wired brake and parking lights. When you put parking lights on, current go through certain resitor to LED, and when you hit brakes, current goes through lower resistance resistor and adds up to the one already provided by parking light.... or how it goes...

What happens if you put your blinkers on when you are in reverse... I guess either yellow would kill white or white will kill yeallow (in terms of light illumination), unless they are same mcd. I did that on my front parking lights (next to headlights) with intent to preserve a function of parking light and add turning light to it. BAD idea, my 10000 white mcd killed 5000 amber. So bad R&D on my part.

Thanks!

 

 

Very nicely done...BY FAR the best version of LED tails performed on a maxima...where did you get the resistors?

 

Max97Thump: How'd you get your tail lights like that?!!?! That is the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life!

Seriously -- I want to know how you did that or where you found them

You rock.

 

Who wants to make me some LED tails! I will pay someone to make some,name a price.

 

jm5464: how much money, how much time?

and are those normal bulbs in your headlights? Or those amber leds or something?

 

jm5464 you are the man. that is the exact way i wanted to do the tails. looks like it costs a fortune. not to mention the man hours!

 

Thanks, I’m glad to here all the time I put into it was worth it. It took me a few months researching and finding parts after that the assembly of it just took a couple weeks, but, was very frustrating. I kept cracking the plastic when I was drilling the holes for the LEDs.

Parts:

I got the resistors and diodes at partsexpress.com (the tech support guys there are awesome). The plastic I used to mount the LEDs in is just acrylic florescent light fixture covering you can get at any hardware store. I worked really well to get the LEDs in lines and hold them in place, but, drilling holes in it is very difficult. Even the acrylic kind cracks very easily.

Wiring:

Set up: This part was kind of complicated. I separated the LEDs into sets: one set for each side of the car and each color/ type (red, amber and white). I decided to wire each set of LEDs in parallel to avoid having to put a resistor on each of the 700+ LEDs. The problem is when you have more LEDs you need higher wattage resistors that have less resistance. This of course depends on how many LEDs you have in a parallel set, what voltage you are putting into them and how many amps each LED draws. If you are familiar with ohms law you know what I’m talking about.

Dimming: To make the LEDs dimmer for the parking lights I did some experimenting and found that if you use 3x the amount of resistance an LED or set of LEDs requires, it is a good brightness for the parking lights. So, I used three high current resistors instead of one. For the brakes I wanted them to be as bright as possible so I used just one high current resistor. I put diodes on each of the power inputs, for the parking and brake, to prevent the power from back feeding (so when you hit the brakes it wont light up your parking lights).

Here is a diagram that may describe it better:


If I turn on the blinkers when my reverse lights are on the white LEDs kind of overpower, but, you can still see little amber dots in there. I don't usually use my blinkers when I’m in reverse though. lol

Whew... too much typing, hope this answers your ?s

 

About $200 and about 4 Months, alot of research and development.

I have Cefiro headlights and I installed projector fog lights in my corners, so, I put an amber bulb in the city light socket and used it for my parking lights. LEDs would be to much of a spot, Not enough glow.

 

Damn, so simple! My research dealt with utilizing relays. Man, you are my hero!

Thanks for answering all the questions!

 

Your taillights look great!

 

yeah definitely sweet man.

 

Now I guess I can reask my question and get an answer this time: Where can I find a write-up about how to do this mod? I was looking for it the other day, didn't find so asked here but no one answered. Now, I see all those people who made it so I guess you guys can show me the way

 

the how-to is actually on a altima forum i forget that site at the moment, ill find it tomorrow if i can.

 

jm5464, those are the sexiest tails i've ever seen. How much money would it take for you to make me a set of those?

 

Look in how tos for a write up on a altima. It does not cover everything but gives a good idea in what direction to go. Write up would be a difficu;t thing. This is a job that takes a lot of hours to complete. For some people it took weeks, for me it took 3 months since I could squeeze out maybe only 8 hours per week on this.

It's not hard, it's just really time consuming.

If this helps, here is a pic of my ghetto LED board located in tails...

 

just scroll up, he already posted it

 

i'll give ya $300 plus my tail lights to make em...anyone?

 

Parts would be more than half that, not worth it.

 

Let me do the math Ill get back to you later tonight.