LED Gill Lights
Thread Starter
Safety Car
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 3,616
Likes: 5
From: Sandhills of North Carolina
LED Gill Lights
I decided to go with the LED strips instead of the marker lights. They look really bright in the photos but actually they are no brigher than the parking lights.
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Last edited by Weav's Vet; Feb 14, 2009 at 05:14 AM.
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Thread Starter
Safety Car
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 3,616
Likes: 5
From: Sandhills of North Carolina
Sorry, no pics this time.
It's pretty easy really. I just tied into the front side marker lights on each side of the car with 16 GA wire. I used a 12" LED strip and cut it in half. I didn't trust the sticky back on the strips so I used some trim adhesive to glue them on with. I painted the inside of the panel with aluminum paint for reflection. The glow would probably be softer is it was black though.
It's pretty easy really. I just tied into the front side marker lights on each side of the car with 16 GA wire. I used a 12" LED strip and cut it in half. I didn't trust the sticky back on the strips so I used some trim adhesive to glue them on with. I painted the inside of the panel with aluminum paint for reflection. The glow would probably be softer is it was black though.
Last edited by Weav's Vet; Feb 14, 2009 at 04:12 AM.
Instructor
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 218
Likes: 0
From: Utah County Utah
You know, radio shack has RGB leds, they are about 3.00 each I think, basically, instead of a single led, it's 3 in one, red, green and blue. each color will be a little brighter then the others because of differences in efficiency, but that is easily fixed by adding resistors to bring down the brightness of that particular color. Red was the brightestm then green, and then blue was the dimmest (but still bright) when I was experimenting.
It would probably end up costing about the same as the strips if you were to build them yourself, especially if you buy the color leds from somewhere else other then radio shack via the internet. You could get them for like 50 cents each, or even cheaper. It would be cheap to stick a small string of them in a clear tubing to make them weather proof.
You could simply mount 3 ***** somewhere inside the car and adjust each color manually to get millions of colors out of them. All 3 let up at the same brightness would give you a white light.
If you use a microcontroller you could make the colors change automatically over time, just slowly fade from color to color, or maybe even make them change based on events. Acceleration, breaking, music, temperature, brightness of outside lights, ect...
Might have to be careful about going full blue and red
Don't want to appear to be impersonating a cop car.
I plan on doing this type of thing myself since I have recently started learning how to program microcontrollers and really learn how electronic circuits work.
It would probably end up costing about the same as the strips if you were to build them yourself, especially if you buy the color leds from somewhere else other then radio shack via the internet. You could get them for like 50 cents each, or even cheaper. It would be cheap to stick a small string of them in a clear tubing to make them weather proof.
You could simply mount 3 ***** somewhere inside the car and adjust each color manually to get millions of colors out of them. All 3 let up at the same brightness would give you a white light.
If you use a microcontroller you could make the colors change automatically over time, just slowly fade from color to color, or maybe even make them change based on events. Acceleration, breaking, music, temperature, brightness of outside lights, ect...
Might have to be careful about going full blue and red
Don't want to appear to be impersonating a cop car.I plan on doing this type of thing myself since I have recently started learning how to program microcontrollers and really learn how electronic circuits work.
Thread Starter
Safety Car
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 3,616
Likes: 5
From: Sandhills of North Carolina
You know, radio shack has RGB leds, they are about 3.00 each I think, basically, instead of a single led, it's 3 in one, red, green and blue. each color will be a little brighter then the others because of differences in efficiency, but that is easily fixed by adding resistors to bring down the brightness of that particular color. Red was the brightestm then green, and then blue was the dimmest (but still bright) when I was experimenting.
It would probably end up costing about the same as the strips if you were to build them yourself, especially if you buy the color leds from somewhere else other then radio shack via the internet. You could get them for like 50 cents each, or even cheaper. It would be cheap to stick a small string of them in a clear tubing to make them weather proof.
You could simply mount 3 ***** somewhere inside the car and adjust each color manually to get millions of colors out of them. All 3 let up at the same brightness would give you a white light.
If you use a microcontroller you could make the colors change automatically over time, just slowly fade from color to color, or maybe even make them change based on events. Acceleration, breaking, music, temperature, brightness of outside lights, ect...
Might have to be careful about going full blue and red Don't want to appear to be impersonating a cop car.
I plan on doing this type of thing myself since I have recently started learning how to program microcontrollers and really learn how electronic circuits work.
It would probably end up costing about the same as the strips if you were to build them yourself, especially if you buy the color leds from somewhere else other then radio shack via the internet. You could get them for like 50 cents each, or even cheaper. It would be cheap to stick a small string of them in a clear tubing to make them weather proof.
You could simply mount 3 ***** somewhere inside the car and adjust each color manually to get millions of colors out of them. All 3 let up at the same brightness would give you a white light.
If you use a microcontroller you could make the colors change automatically over time, just slowly fade from color to color, or maybe even make them change based on events. Acceleration, breaking, music, temperature, brightness of outside lights, ect...
Might have to be careful about going full blue and red
Don't want to appear to be impersonating a cop car.I plan on doing this type of thing myself since I have recently started learning how to program microcontrollers and really learn how electronic circuits work.
Go for it......that may be a little radical for me though.
I just wanted a slightly different look. Besides, electrical stuff is like Greek to me. 
Instructor
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 172
Likes: 0
From: Taylors SC
Here's the link that has a downloadable pdf file that shows step by step how to do it: http://www.oznium.com/corvette_LED_shark_gills.php . It's what I followed and they came out great. I found this on the C5 forum. What's great about it is that you choose how mild to wild you wanna get. Some guys/gals even hook'em up to flash with their turn signals. I'll post a couple of pics of mine when I get home.
