ShawnOk

iTrader: (1)

Caseoane, I'm still interested in doing this mod as we discussed. I've ordered the angel eyes. I know youre waiting for my info on which leds are best but in the meantime can you please post a pic of the angel eyes and regular bulb installed? Possibly two photos; one with brake pressed and then without. Wanna try to plan out my wiring path. Thanks!

Caseoane

Shawn,

will do. I want to put in another layer of silicone tonight before assembling everything, though, so it'll take me a while.

You ask a good question, and one I've been asking myself for a while: I have a dual-intensity LED there, but I don't know if I want to keep it as is or not. The Angel Eyes themselves maybe bright enough for tail-lights, so maybe I'll only need the LED bulb for brake light.
But then, I also need to figure out if the brake light now is powerful enough, or if I need something brighter to offer more contrast with the Angel Eyes.
(Does this logic make sense to you?)

This is the bulb I have in now. 220 lumens, apparently, but I think that's it's highest intensity (i.e. Brakes).

On a side note: I measured current draws on everything:

• The original incandescent bulb is 5W y 0.41A, so 30Ω.
• The Angel Eye draws 0.30A, 40Ω
• The LED 0.03A.

I don't know the tolerance of the "light out" system in the car, so I'm going to try assembling everything and seeing if it throws an error. If it does, I'll have to put in a resistor.

Let me know your thoughts. I have a feeling you're be better at electrical stuff than I am....

Caseoane

Ok, I wired and installed the left side. I made a video, but it's difficult to see the difference.

I'm going to wait until the summer and then I'll decide if I need more powerful bulbs or not...I think I'll be ok.

ShawnOk

iTrader: (1)

Bad news, neither one of the tail/stop lights (20-012 & 20-201) I tried from ijdmtoy worked properly. Both tripped the dash warning light. No bueno. Anyone got any other ideas, short of adding resistors? I would rather not cut into the OEM harness to add resistors.

Caseoane

Mmmmm... Weird. Were they sold as error-free? Can you post the link of exactly what you bought?

I like superbrightleds.com, although I've never bought error-free lights from them...

ShawnOk

iTrader: (1)

I've posted the links below for the bulbs that I attempted to use. According to the customer support (Johnny and Jay) the SC430 does NOT require error free, nor decoders for the tail/stop lights. Evidently they are INCORRECT, as indicated by my test fit. I avoided the error free ones (20-001 and 20-009), as they have a small decoder box that measure 2"x1"x1", which would be difficult to fit behind the lamp housing (no space between tail light and car metal- in my opinion). I'm going to call their customer support tomorrow and see what they suggest now.

http://store.ijdmtoy.com/27-SMD-5050...s-p/20-201.htm
http://store.ijdmtoy.com/7443-7444-T...s-p/20-012.htm

Caseoane

Yup, clearly they have no idea what they are talking about. I think we're going to have to go with the resistors... There is plenty of space around the housing (if not directly behind)...

ShawnOk

iTrader: (1)

Caseoane, I'm trying to plan the resistor setup and need help, please. On the red tail/stop bulb there are three wires: white with black stripe, green with white stripe and all green. Obviously the white with black stripe is the ground. Can you specify which is which of the remaining two? Which "hot" is the stop feed; full green or green with white stripe?

PS... Customer support says we may need two resistors for each side (4 in total) so I'm testing that theory (since they were incorrect before) and will post my results here. But first I need to know which wire is which.

Caseoane

Hey ShawnOK,

i seem to remember that the solid green is the one I cut in order to wire the Angel Eyes, but I have now assembled everything. Let me open it up again this weekend and I'll confirm.

I have a feeling customer support is right on this one: the car will measure resistance to both tail lights and brake lights circuits.
Just to be safe, though, I would start by putting the resistor on the brake circuits (both sides) and taking the car out for a ride. I remember that when I put in the LED bulbs, it took a while for the "burned bulb" indicator to light up... so I wonder if the car only measures the brake circuit and it didn't register the low resistance until I hit the brakes?

ShawnOk

iTrader: (1)

Ok so more problems. I worked a little bit on the led upgrade today and more bad news. I will try to keep it as simple as possible. Firstly, I did isolate that the green and white wire is the stop light feed. I tested with the 20-012 CREE bulb. A resistor on the stop (green and white) wire will resolve the dash error. But the error light will illuminate once you turn on the headlights. Therefore I added a second resistor to the tail light (solid green) wire and the dash light resolved. BUT, something happens with the ecu and the taillights will not illuminate! Brake lights are still functional though but no tail light illumination. I checked fuses, nothing is blown. Thus, this tells me there is no way to use a LED in the this situation. Once I put the halogen bulb back in and removed the resistors' ground, the tail light illuminated again after I restarted the car. Too bad, I guess.

Caseoane, using your angel eyes tied to tail light feed and using a halogen bulb, do you get a dash light error? Are the tail lights working properly (ie. When headlights are on)?

ALSO, on another note. I tested brightness of each bulb. The CREE LED's are truly not much brighter than the Halogen OEM. So I think I might keep the halogen bulb and add the Angel Eye with the help of Caseoane (assuming he responds that he's not getting a dash error with this proposed setup).

lilSCsteve

iTrader: (71)

Great write up! +for a DIYer...nice!

tromly

Superb!! Great looking mods, very imaginative

Caseoane

Thank you!

Caseoane

Alright... I had my electronic engineer friend over last night (he's developing the Sonar/GPS system for a company that builds autonomous tractors.... how cool is that?!).

We measured everything again, calculated the resistance we needed everywhere and tested it all. By the time he left, I had no errors and everything worked as it should.

Here's a summary:

What my friend said is that the manufacturing of incandescent lightbulbs is not very precise, so it's not uncommon to see +/- 10 or even 20% variations in current draw. This means that there is no way the car is sensitive enough to detect a 0.06 amp variation between my angel eye + LED combination and the original incandescent bulb.

So... we tested that theory by disconnecting the battery and starting the car with my set up connected and no resistor. Sure enough, the "burned bulb" dash light didn't come on... until I pressed the brake... which makes sense because now that circuit was only using the LED bulb only, bypassing the angel eyes.

So now my taillights work well without a resistor anywhere. On to the brakes:

Given his theory that there is no way that the car can be that sensitive, we used a 6 ohmns (2amps ) resistor I had lying around. Sure enough, after turning the car off and restarting again, no dash light with the lights on, or off, nor braking.... also no issues with the main headlights.

So I'm golden! :-)

To Shawn's question above, though: I think something must be off with your set-up, because if current draws for the CREE light you use are similar to mine, the resistors you installed should be enough... call me if you want me to walk you through what I did in more detail.

Caseoane

Alright... this is hopefully my last update. As requested by ShawnOK, some more detail on how everything needs to be wired with the right resistors (sorry, I'm too lazy to learn how to do a proper wiring diagram...)
I can confirm that with this set up, I get no dash lights or hyper-flashing.

I hope someone else attempts this and posts their own improvements!