The progress has been picking up on the car lately, and I feel like I'm in the home stretch. Most of the work has been on the inside of the car.
I decided to start over again with the taillights. There were a few LEDs that burned out. Since I encased the bulbs in urethane, they're not replaceable. I was also concerned about brightness and visibility of the lights. So I completely redesigned them. The taillight bulbs will be serviceable, each bulb will have a reflector behind it, and the voltage will be controlled by an adjustable voltage regulator. I learned that fractions of a volt matter when dealing with these LEDs and it's just not sufficient to try to control the voltages with resistors. I also followed the wiring scheme of the standard SLC taillights which has the taillights flash for turn signals, rather than have a separate amber turn signal. There will also be a stand alone reverse light which will go where the SLC logo is molded in, below the license plate.
Using the old taillight as a plug, I made molds to shape the acrylic. The design entails using 3 stacked layers rather than the previous design of a single layer of acrylic. That means shaping the acrylic by holding it up to the body of the car won't work.
This is what the LEDS will be mounted in, including the reflectors.
Once brought up to temp and formed, I tried allowing the pieces to cool together so their shapes would fit together better. This took a lot of trial and error
This is one of the bulbs mounted in the reflector
This is the back side, with the back side of the LED sitting flush with the back of the reflector
The front, middle and back of the taillight assembly
Test fitting the pieces together
Test fitting onto the car
Painting….
The various components of the taillight
The layers of the taillight assembled, and the box that holds the voltage regulators
Final product