brag3006

Has anyone tried to modernize the side marker lights, front turn signals, and/or fog lights?

I love the modernized tail lights, and was wondering if it was possible to make similar changes to the other fixed lights to give the car a clean & flush look.

For the pop-up headlights, I can just grab a different housing.

Thank you!

Jake the Snake

Like this?
re-japan-r-knight.com

In my opinion the most dated looking part of the car is the colored rectangles for lights. I just got some smoked lenses (with colored bulbs) since I have an s4 and they blend in to the side molding great.

grantrx713b

Have you considered using LED lights?

PnoyRx7

iTrader: (3)

I have noticed that you have to use the same color LED light bulb as the housing color or else it washes out the brightness.

For instance put a basic white led into the side amber lenses and they are weaker than the halogen bulbs

mazdaverx713b

iTrader: (91)

That's pretty interesting. I wouldn't have figured swapping over to an led would wash out the brightness when using say an amber housing over a white led. That's good to know.

PnoyRx7

iTrader: (3)

Yeah I figured it out the hard way. Ordered all the bulbs in white and failed miserably. The brake lights were weaker than stock.

I'm not an engineer but it has something to do with the color of the light and being absorbed vs not being absorbed by the color of the plastic.

Also on a side note LEDs are not very good for spreading out light as well as regular halogens. They are great for shooting the beam straight out and away but not so much when you need something to be fully illuminated from all angles.

Just throw a regular old bulb vs led in the brake lights for example and you can see the beam is pretty bright only in certain sections

Acesanugal

iTrader: (5)

This is wholly dependent on the design and quality of the LED drop in bulb.

The Zevo LED bulbs are far brighter than the incandescents they replace and fill the housings and lenses with light evenly. They are brilliant in the brake lights, turn signals and side markers.

SYLVANIA ZEVO 1157 Red LED Bulb, (Contains 2 Bulbs)

PnoyRx7

iTrader: (3)

Agreed. All I suggest is getting color matching LED bulbs to further help the situation. Usually I order fleabay ones that have quite a few LEDs on them from all angles

On a side note any ideas for replacing the guage cluster with LEDs? Will these zevo one spread light better in a closed environment like the clear tracks for the cluster ? (At least I think it has those last time I checked) I just don't want parts of my cluster dull and some super bright but if these zevo are good for this application I'll order some.

Acesanugal

iTrader: (5)

I haven't personally tried the Zevo's in the gauge cluster, but I did try a few standard Phillips LED's with smoked heads on them in the gauge cluster years ago.. and against the incandescent bulbs next to them, it appeared there were dark spots. I'm not convinced it was the LED creating a dark spot due to lack of light dispersal (because most of that is handled by the acrylic channel), but more so because they were so much brighter than the old incandescent bulbs illuminating next to them. I do want to try the Zevo bulbs in the gauge cluster, I just can't justify spending that much on all those bulbs right now. I'm reasonably certain if they were all quality LEDs in there, it'd likely be fine. Torn between amber or white though... I used white Phillips bulbs the first time and they were too white for the amber color of the gauges. I do need to pull my cluster soon though to meter some stuff, so, maybe I'll swipe a few of the amber Zevo's from my parking lights and put them in there to try and photograph the difference. No guarantees on when it'll happen though.

A lot of the 'hot spot' problems with LED's in gauge clusters is due to the diode having no diffusion of any kind.. the diode is usually quite a lot closer to what it is illuminating due to poor design vs. the light emitting focal point of the incandescent (which is essentially a sphere of light)... and the extra brightness of the LED also tends to play a part in it as well. However, the Zevo 194's are only a little taller physically than a standard 194 and have a frosted globe to diffuse the 'hot spot' effect and give a bit better dispersion. Couple that to the acrylic light channel that disperses light to the face of the gauges and I'd hazard a guess it'll be fine.

/novel

Jager

iTrader: (10)

I had good success with lights from http://www.gtrlighting.com.

Local guys, amazing job.

brag3006

Bumping older thread... Still looking for ideas! Thanks!

Relisys190

iTrader: (4)

I just recently went on an LED extravaganza for my s5. I installed the Sylvania ZEVO 1157's in my tail lights. 4 total (40$. I went with the RED color and they worked fantastic. For the side markers I went with Phillips 194 LED, white for the rear sidemarkers and Amber 194's for the front side markers. If you use white LED's behind amber lenses the color will wash out. For my license plate lights *89 bulb*, reverse lights and 3rd brake light I used 1156 LED's for these 5 bulbs. 6000K and they are VERY bright. It does not wash out the 3rd brake light and the license plate lights look fantastic and modern. The 89 bulb was VERY hard to find but you CAN use an 1156 bulb in it's place.

I still have yet to find a FRONT turn signal LED (1157) and a rear turn signal (1156). The bulb needs to have a built in resistor to cancel the rapid flash since our relay is built into the CPU in the drivers foot well. I did find one (SERIUS LED) on Amazon with a built in resistor, but it's 40$ for two bulbs. I may still try them and see how they perform.
Lastly I am in search of a good h3c LED for the fog light location, I'm not sure if i'm going to go 5000-6000k or to a nice YELLOW JDM style fog light color.
And of course for headlights we have a few options, albiet EXPENSIVE. There's the GE LED 6054 bulb at $200 per bulb or the JWspeaker 8900 at about $200 per bulb also. I will not buy cheap headlights because of the safety issue, it has to be a known good quality LED if i'm going to use them in the headlights location. but at 400$ for the retrofit I need to wait a few weeks to do this.

-M

JuicyFC

In regard to hyperflash with LEDs I recently modded my S5 taillight assemblies to led myself and I found a pretty easy mod to disable the hyperflash circuit. I followed this tutorial for the FD since the blinker relay circuit is the same between both cars. It's a simple solder job to put in a larger resistor or you can straight up remove the stock resistor and leave the circuit open. Again this will disable hyperflash so you wont get a warning when a bulb goes out but I prefer that over creating unnecessary heat with a load resistor to trick the circuit.

WondrousBread

I did this as well on my FC, worked perfectly. The resistor I used is 1 megohm.