When driving at night you need to be able to see where you’re going. And that goes for reversing up as well. But the stock white lights on [Ryan’s] ride didn’t provide the type of illumination he wanted, so he replaced them with two sets of super bright LED modules. These are ridiculously bright, perhaps outshining some types of headlights. And since they bring a lot of heat there’s a fair amount of work that went into mounting them.
He sourced some Cree XM-L T6 LED modules, two for each side of the car. These can put out intensity approaching 1000 Lumens each. To keep them cool he grabbed one CPU heat sink for each. These include a copper core with aluminum fins coming off like a spiral starburst. To act as a bezel he used a piece of copper clad board. This gives him a surface to mount the heat sinks, and after coating it with chrome brite it also acts as a reflector. Once mounted he fires it up and the difference is remarkable.
While I could be mistaken, I’m fairly certain that these are NOT street-legal in the US. I suppose this could be good if you often find yourself out at night with the sudden need to throw the car in reverse…. stunt drivers, perhaps?
These aren’t legal anywhere in the world since you can blind other people. This also applies to IR power leds because they could be used to overload speeding traps cameras at night.
I see what you just did.
in india EVERYTHING is legal, even chopping the rook of a hatchback to make a poor mans convertible.
*roof
I did not think they are regulated as they are not used in normal motion of a vechicle. I know Federal DOT only requires reverse lights on commercial vehicles (maybe a few other classes) http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/fmcsrruletext.aspx?reg=393.11 ,so I doubt they regulate them on personal vehicles. State Laws may be another issue though.
http://www.ntea.com/uploadedFiles/NTEA_Site_Home/Technical_Resources/Lighting_Guide/fmvss_lighting_chart.pdf
‘reverse lamps, required on all vehicles’
FMVSS 108 covers all the vehicle lighting specs http://fmvss108.tripod.com/
they’re illegal mods. but obviously people mod cars illegally all the time.
I Stand corrected! Still ranks up there with Plate covers being illegal! Love the MOD though!!!
As a 3G Eclipse owner I can appreciate this. The stock reverse lights are a little on the dim side.
Anyways great job Ryan, that came out looking nice and clean.
I got 8 XM-L T6 LEDs like that to light up my 90G aquarium. I can confirm that they produce a lot of light!
Nice MOD. For bonus points he should wire in a switch so that can put them on at will.
i used to have a rear-facing fog light on my car which i could flip on and off…was replaced with a forward facing bulb and used the switch to get people off my tailpipe by blinding them.
worked pretty well.
ha! Exactly what I was thinking. I rather hit someone with light than slam the brakes to get them to stop tailgating me
So you like being a vigilantee (so to speak)?
He is Batman.
I am not a fan of this.
I love bright lights as much as the next nerd, but I do not appreciate bright lights that blind others, making streets less safe.
I have bright reverse lights on my pickup truck, but they are *auxiliary* lights. I can activate them from a switch in the cab. Normally I don’t use them, but on private property (such as my acreage, where there is nobody but me and the deer) they are very useful.
I agree. i drove behind a someone in the morning that had WHITE tail lights. Since it was already somewhat light out, it wasn’t that bad, but it like looking into a pair of headlight, borderline high-beams. Really annoy.
Definitely not street legal in Denmark (maybe even all of EU).
Some secondary optics would go a long way toward putting that light where it would be more useful as opposed to other people’s eyes. It’s always tempting to punish a tailgater. . . but it’s probably better to just get out of the passing lane.
Not punishing the tailgater with your backup lights is definitively better for your grarbox 🙂
What is this chrome brite? If it’s painted onto something clear like glass or clear plastic sheet, is it super shiny when viewed *through* the glass or plastic?
Really can’t judge how problematic they could be by photos. In the event the can screw up the night vision or otherwise distract other drivers, they may not be such a good idea to replace the factory lighting with. As axillary lighting to operate manually when ever needed no problem, but wouldn’t two get the job done? I find on more modern cars I find that the brake lights add extra light if ever needed.
I flipped over to the source page, they talk about heat problems and such.
Instead of putting LEDS where the bulbs were, why not make a light pipe of some sort and you could make a fighteningly power light source where ever room permits.
People please, these are REVERSE lights. They are not in use while driving. They’re not going to blind anyone.
+1. If these blind someone, then they are doing their job. The point of reverse lights is to see everything behind you at night. I had a short stint as a pizza delivery “expert” and found myself wanting bright reverse lights many times on late night deliveries.
Although, I don’t see the need for such tremendous heat dissipation. They are typically only on for a few seconds at a time. Is he backing out of a 3 mile driveway or something?
Also, I accidentally hit “Report comment” instead of “Reply” so sorry about that.
“Although, I don’t see the need for such tremendous heat dissipation. They are typically only on for a few seconds at a time. Is he backing out of a 3 mile driveway or something?”
Whoops. Yep, he is backing up for a long time. I missed that in the very first post.