Started to build LED taillights for the purple car as a side project since I hate myself and love tedious work.

The lenses are actually super easy to get off with a heat gun.
I bought about 400 LEDs to do this job, in total each light will use somewhere around 180 a piece. I ended up just measuring the lenses and buying eight prototyping circuit boards as close to the right size as I could.
Here is one taillight worth of boards made up.

These take an insanely long time to solder since I'm using prototyping boards instead of having a pcb made to just solder the components to. First board took about 6 hours, once I got a little more comfortable, the subsequent boards only took about 2 hours a piece.

Here's a couple teasers of what's to come. Keep in mind, the boards are not mounted yet, so they arent sitting exactly how they will on the finished product. I still need to trim material from the light housing away to make them fit properly.

Reverse light

Running light

Brakes
I need to cut the housing behind the turn signal and left side brake lights before I can even get a preview shot of the LEDs in them.

 

Still grinding away on these taillights, but I made a bit of progress. Here's the tails with only the running lights on.

And brake lights

And the light without the lenses in place.

Just for ***** and giggles I tested them all at once.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how they are turning out. The housing still needs trimmed a bit for everything to sit exactly how I'd like, and also need to reseal everything from the back. I have one more board to make for the other taillight (these take forever for me to make) and I need to finish the control boards for both lights.

On another note, I finally pulled the rear end from the car. It's pretty rusty.


Thankfully it fit in the sandblasting cabinet at work.


It will probably be a while untill I get everything painted and back on the rear because I'm machining all the bushings myself.

I also pressure washed an engine and transmission I had lying around. Just need to order some engine mounts and a clutch so I can throw it in and get it out of my shop.

 

Whipped up some solid bushings on the lathe for the trailing arms. Pretty happy with how they turned out since I haven't really had much practice on the lathe.

Pressed in easy, even was able to re-use the C-clip that used to hold the pillowball bushing in.



Cleaned up one of the transmissions I had lying around and replaced shifter spring, all shifter bushings, and sensors.


Also had some time to finish up the boards for voltage regulation for the LED tails

 

Progress in the last month has been a little slow going. I've been hard at work on making solid bushings and adjustable arms for the rear in my free time. I did manage to get my extra engine block and transmission sitting in the car as well.


Here's a couple pics of the solid DTSS bushings and camber arm I turned on the lathe. Probabally will not be doing any more work in the engine bay untill I have the rear end back together again.



All the bushings have been pressed in already. I'm just finishing up the toe arms now and then I can start buttoning the rear suspension up.