Running light to LED blinker Mod

Hi Taco World!!!

Its been a while since I did the build thread on my square tubing bumper. I love the bumper, but deleting the old plastic bumper came at the cost of losing the blinkers. Im not sure how other years are, but for my '99 there are housings for running lights located to the side of the headlights. I'm sure I can't be the only one that has a tube bumper and lost his blinkers! So, to save work, I decided to open up the running lights and switch them to blinkers. I bought amber LED light strips and put them inside the housings. Here is a link to the LEDs I bought:
https://www.superbrightleds.com/mor...-3-chip-smd-led-5050-with-lc2-connector/1465/

I chose the white background, because the black will look ugly though the glass.



Here are the steps:

1. Bake running lights at 250 F for 10 minutes. They dont need more than this.

2. Have a screwdriver or popsicle stick ready, and pry open the headlights. The adhesive used creates long stringers when you pry them apart, and it is impossible to clean it off of the inside of the lights without scratching them, so use the screwdriver/stick to catch them before they fall back on the plastic.

3. Drill a hole at the location shown in the picture, and carve out the old bulb mounting location with a blade. You are basically trying to use the flat, forward facing surface for the 9 light strip, so you need to carve out the rim for the strip. see the picture below.

4. The light strips need to be cut into a 9-LED section, and a 6-LED section. Cut the strips and solder them together with 2 1.5" sections of 20 gauge wire. Test the LEDs so that you know they are operational before the next steps. The photo below shows the small soldered sections of 20 ga. wire.



5. Install the strips. The 3M adhesive on the back is good, but I mixed some 5-min epoxy to hold down the strips and to secure the wires (also prevents them from corroding/ arcing. Put a bunch of epoxy around the wire exiting the top of the housing, it will bend around and try to peel the light strip off if you don't. You can see I got some of the factory adhesive on the lights. Luckily you actually can't tell once the cover is back on.





** To seal the hole from the old bulb, I put washer that fit in the hole, and filled the rest of the hole with JB weld. Here is a picture of the start of that process:



6. Wait for the epoxy to dry, and put the lights back in the oven on a wooden board for 10 minutes at 250 F. If you go much higher on temp you risk deforming the lights. You can go lower if you wish.



7. Remove the lights and quickly seal the housings back together.

8. Cut the wires from the old blinker cable, and connect them to some new extensions. I used 18 ga. automotive wire, red and black so it was easy to remember +/-.

9. Solder the resistor across the wires, and then solder the LED lights to those same points. I used an 8-ohm 20 W non inductive resistor from radio shack. I taped up the resistor nicely afterwords with electrical tape.





10. Install the lights and enjoy!

I'm really happy with the brightness of the LED's (380 lumens/ft for SMD5050's), and it actually looks like there are more than 15 LEDs because of the way the light reflects inside the housing. Overall: worth it.

 

Forgot to add pics of the DRLs after install:

 

I like this. I may have to do this.

 

Thanks! The drls are 11$ per side from Amazon, and the LEDs were 15$. Resistors were 2.99$ each, so im into the lights about 45$ since I used wire that I had lying around. I'll post a video of them at night soon, they look great! Really happy with them