Do It Yourself Hot Rod Kustom Website

	Custom LED Side Marker Lights - 1954 Pontiac I want to add side marker lights for safety sake. I looked for months trying to find a side marked light that would work with the overall feel of the car. I found that some of the 2000 Mazdas had nice oval side marker lights that would work but would require extensive body mods to "sink" them into the panels. Not to mention the cost of new side marker lights. Just down the back alley from me, is a 68 Dodge that is under a tarp and low and behold, it has the exact style of side marker lights that I want. Unfortunately, the only year that Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler made them was for 1968. After scrounging the wreckers for 4 months and not finding a single one, I bit the bullet and bought a set off a guy over the Internet. BTW they are called bullet style side marker lights. Front and rear 68 Dodge bullet style side marker lights The front have a light yellow lens and the rear lights have a light red lens. The bulb housing portion was missing off of the front set and unuseable on the rear set. I used a dremel tool with a fine cuttng wheel to remove the bulb housings. Interestingly, the front and rear housings are not identical. The front housing is flat while the rear housing has a crease in it. It looks like it sits on a trim line. The rear housing will work better for me on my front fender trim line so I've swapped lens in the pictures. The front and rear housings are not manufactured the same either. the rear housing is held together by folding 4 tabs and the front housing is screwed together. Side marker housings taken apart. Lower left corner shows 4 tabs, while lower right shows screw threads for holding everything together. I'm going to use super bright LEDs for illumination and found that I could fit seven 5 mm LEDs into the housing. Together they give off enough light to be seen in the daytime as running lights and as signal lights. I'll vary the intensity between running lights and signal lights by changing the current. They are so bright that they hurt your eyes to look at them directly! LEDs are arranged in a 2-3-2 pattern Small package ready to be siliconed into Dodge housings The LEDs are arranged in two parallel series circuits, one has the two outside LED pairs (4 LEDs in total) in series with a 220 ohm resistor. The other circuit has the center 3 LEDs in series with a 330 ohm resistor. Trim the corners round and it's ready to be siliconed in the housings. 7 LEDs on the left (clear housing but emit RED light) and 7 RED super bright LEDs lit and shining through lens. Pix doesn't show how bright it really is. Finished side marker lights (digital camera doesn't like reflections very much!) I used black silicon to glue the LED circuit into the housings. Color coded the wires: Red - +12V and Black - ground. In hindsight, maybe I should of used longer wires. I also twisted the wires together so that they look cooler and don't get tangled. Twisted together makes it easier to work with. Here's the tool for drilling the holes - the amazing Step Drill I used a step drill to drill the proper hole size for the housings. I had to hand file the last little bit. It's not shown but there are two keys on the back of the housings. A small key on top and a larger key on the bottom. The keys are to stop the housing from turning when the locking nut is screwed tight from behind. Two corresponding slots were filed by hand. Note: this is the time to be patient and extremely careful. Ideally all the holes and pieces should be fitted before painting because tools slip and paint scratches! I will be doing a lot of touch-up! Here's the front side marker light installed. To figure out the best looking position for the front side marker light, I used a large washer with masking tape on the back and moved it around the front fender. I lined it up with the fender scoop. If you are interested, it is 3 1/4 inches down from the body line and 6 inches from the door line. Here's the rear side marker light installed The rear side marker light is placed where the old Pontiac Indian head emblem used to be. Personally, I found the emblem to be very large and twice the size it should of been (they've been sold if you are wondering).