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What is the best way to do this on a 69? I had bought two 68 inner lamp housings without fiber optic holes and was going to run a 68 rear lamp harness as it looks the same as the 69 where it joins the dash harness at the firewall. I just realized, however that the bolt pattern is different on those two inner housings. So I need to get two more 69 rears with fiber optics. I have both a 68 and 69 rear harness, both with fiber optics. What is the easiest way to do this mod? Use the 69 harness and mod it, or use the 68 and just plug the fiber optic holes on the two inner housings. Going to just use a couple LED’s on license plate frame for back up lights either way. Thanks!
I'm doing the same thing- I plugged the 2 inner fiber optic holes. Clipped a piece of an old harness to get the correct double contact sockets and spliced them in.
I'm doing the same thing- I plugged the 2 inner fiber optic holes. Clipped a piece of an old harness to get the correct double contact sockets and spliced them in.
I was looking at doing this as well but don't want to splice into my new rear harness .I was going to make a splitter ,one pig tail to plug in to the brake light connection and split to two brake light pig tails to plug in the back of the housings but would need to change the inner two housings for the brake light ones .Its on my list.
Sug, it looks like a 68 rear harness works perfectly here as the plug that connects with the dash harness is exactly the same. I am going to sell the new 69 harness I have and use the 68 I picked up awhile ago.
Thanks to posts like this, I decided to mod my the taillights and reverse lights on my 69 to four red lenses and a relocated assembly under the license plate . Have a look.
This wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. My rear harness has the 1157 filaments swapped, side-to-side. I do not know if all 69’s are like that, kind of hard to tell. It wasn’t very noticeable with incandescent bulbs, but converting to LED’s, the brightness difference bothered me. Being moderately OCD I needed to fix it somehow without digging into my rear harness as I have a fuel pump in the way on the dim side that I didn’t want to touch. Solution was to reorient the LED by filing off one of the bumps and inserting the bulb 180 out. It’s worked out OK even though it’s not fully inserted.
I left all the original receptacles in place, so the 1156 and 1157 sockets remain. I jumpered into the outer lights to control the inner lights. All four brake lights light up when the brakes are applied. The directionals are two at a time on either side. I don't normally drive at night so that circuit is still the same, the two outer lights.
The 1156 and 57 replacements are equally bright and I figured the photons might as well be red like the lenses. Color artifacts from the camera don’t do the picture justice so I’ll leave that picture out. But they really are bright and more importantly all four are really noticeable.
The reverse lights are an acrylic piece that I cut and polished to hold two SuperBright multi-mode five LED light bars. They have about 20 different flash modes and can be synchronized. I picked a simple mode and left them unsynchronized. You can see a reflection artifact briefly in the video.
The surround is some aluminum bar stock that I bent and polished. The flag is a modern variety that fits very nicely after cutting off the engine logo that it came with. Got it off eBay.
I took some pains with the wiring, that took most of the time. Have a couple of WeatherTech connectors so if the LED’s fail I don’t have to cut any wires to swap the assembly out.
About the car. It is now 50 years old. Build date was January 3, 1969. I’m the second owner and the car was bought in Ohio as the license plate frame shows. Jackshaw was a performance Chevy and Pontiac dealer and sponsored drag racing. I had the frame made up, I don't know if the dealer ever supplied any frames with new car purchases but I couldn't find any. I am curious if anyone else knows anything about the dealer. There are a couple of pictures on the internet, but not that much.
Thanks for looking and thanks for the inspiration!
Well done Ignatz! I ended up just using a 68 rear harness as I am rewiring the car anyway. Will do something similar to you with the reverse lights. Thanks for sharing!
Oh and for anyone else doing this, I did find 68 inner tail lamps without fiber optic holes will not work on 69’s because the non fiber optic bases have a different mounting bolt pattern.
Ignatz thank much. If my fabrication skills were even remotely in your league I would go with that. Looks like a factory piece. Very well done!
I'm in Los Gatos/Saratoga area. would love to meet some time!
Ignatz thank much. If my fabrication skills were even remotely in your league I would go with that. Looks like a factory piece. Very well done!
I'm in Los Gatos/Saratoga area. would love to meet some time!
Thanks Dave/platinum. It did take a lot of fooling around to get right. You are not too far from where I live so yes I will keep your location in mind.
I'm doing the same thing- I plugged the 2 inner fiber optic holes. Clipped a piece of an old harness to get the correct double contact sockets and spliced them in.
Did that mess up the turn signal flasher as now your brake/turn signal circuit is drawing more current lighting two stop/turn filaments (Not counting side marker light) instead of one?
I'm looking to doing this but I want to do my back-up lights like they were in '68 built into the rear valance. The problem is the backup light housing/lens is one of those '68 only parts. They can be found but they are expensive. I'm looking into late model Camaro backup housings/lens.
12-13-2018, 09:18 PM
4 tail/brake lamp conversion on a 69
simple an effective way of doing this.
