Author Topic: Taillight housing rebuild w/pics update: w/video (Read 712 times)

66gt350 · « **on:** January, 21, 2010, 11:39:38 PM »

Well, I rebuilt my taillight housing tonight, and all said and done it work!! It all started off with installing the LED taillights. I found that the driver's side socket was cracked. I temped fixed that with a hose clamp...redneck, yes, but it held good. But I was still have problems. I cleaned the connection, used some dielectric grease, and wiggled the connector until this happened:

And after talking with the local mustang shop, he said that the repo's weren't all they're cracked up to be. I've never been a fan of the 66 brake housing, and how the electric attaches. So, while I was at the local speed shop, I found a new ford brake socket. I picked a pair of them up and a couple weather tight connectors:

With a little help of a small hammer, I tapped out the old socket:

I pressed, or I should say just pushed in the new sockets. They weren't too tight, so I made them fairly permanent -- I silver soldered the socket to the housing:

Wired up the new socket. The socket had a grounding tab, so I attached a new ground wire:

And finally, inserted the LED's, and the housing is complete:

On the car's wiring, I just had to remove the one existing plug, and wire in the connector and it's finished. Got the housing back in the car, and for a nice switch, it actually works!!

Horseplay · « **Reply #1 on:** January, 22, 2010, 04:02:36 AM »

Good solution to your problem.

While you had it all apart, however, would have been a good time to clean up the housing itself and paint the inner housing with a good reflective paint. You'd be surprised at how much of a difference it makes in terms of brightness.

66gt350 · « **Reply #2 on:** January, 22, 2010, 01:13:16 PM »

I knew that I'd get a comment on how ugly they look!!! :lol :lol Maybe someday I'll clean 'em up, I'll just add that to my to-do list. Crap it list is supposed to be getting shorter not longer!!!

With the LED's don't need to worry about the reflective surface. there's a night and day difference compared to the old bulbs.

Fast68back · « **Reply #3 on:** January, 22, 2010, 01:26:33 PM »

Soo, where is the video of them in the car and working?

RyanG85 · « **Reply #4 on:** January, 22, 2010, 08:57:14 PM »

Nice work. I agree, we need a video of them working and a few more videos of the chick in your avatar!

66gt350 · « **Reply #5 on:** January, 26, 2010, 09:29:32 AM »

Ok...you guys wanted a video. Last night I replaced one of the LEDs with the normal bulb. It's pretty easy to see which is the LED and which is the incandescent bulb. Sorry for the crappy video quality...it was done with my blackberry and converted to .avi video.

-rob

70_Fastback · « **Reply #6 on:** January, 26, 2010, 09:44:33 AM »

You should replace your old flashers with new electronic ones while you're at it.

66gt350 · « **Reply #7 on:** January, 26, 2010, 10:00:13 AM »

Since I replaced the front and rear lights with LED's, I had to replace the flashers with a new one that would work with LED's.

sigtauenus · « **Reply #8 on:** February, 01, 2010, 06:32:14 PM »

Nice work. I was thinking the same thing as the others about cleaning them up, but I understand priorities too.

Looks great! Definitely looking forward to having LEDs all through the car. Well, except the headlights.

AtlantaSteve · « **Reply #9 on:** February, 01, 2010, 07:10:18 PM »

Quote from: sigtauenus on February, 01, 2010, 06:32:14 PM

Nice work. I was thinking the same thing as the others about cleaning them up, but I understand priorities too.

Looks great! Definitely looking forward to having LEDs all through the car. Well, except the headlights.

Hey, if you're ready to drop 540 bucks, you can have LED headlights now too!!!

sigtauenus · « **Reply #10 on:** February, 01, 2010, 07:23:10 PM »

Quote from: AtlantaSteve on February, 01, 2010, 07:10:18 PM

Hey, if you're ready to drop 540 bucks, you can have LED headlights now too!!!

Um, yeah, and that is exactly why the exeption!!

66gt350 · « **Reply #11 on:** February, 01, 2010, 08:10:39 PM »

For me that's not the reason: they are BUTT UGLY!!!

AtlantaSteve · « **Reply #12 on:** February, 02, 2010, 06:44:53 AM »

Quote from: 66gt350 on February, 01, 2010, 08:10:39 PM

For me that's not the reason: they are BUTT UGLY!!!

You know, that is a great point. When I see someone has upgraded their mustang to a modern system, I really want to see it look like the original headlights. It's fine if there's a halogen bulb in the center, but I want to see curved glass lenses, with the crystaline grooves cut on the inside, and a reflector behind that. All the systems with flat plastic front lenses, and tribars and stuff like that just don't look right to me. I saw one guy who stuffed a BMW projector housing into his headlights so he could have true HID lights. Looked like a boob on the front of his car :P

Upgrading to halogen is fine, I just want it to LOOK like the old-school sealed beam bulbs.

And yeah, the LED headlights are ugly. But even if they were beautiful I can't drop 500 bucks on that.