You put a lot of hard work into your project vehicle, and just like adding bigger brakes to stop shorter, equally important is being seen and signaling the drivers around you. United Pacific Industries (UPI) has the answer with LED Taillight Conversions. This simple project can help make sure your ride can be seen with improved visibility of tail, turn, and stop light signaling functions.
You might be asking yourself, why LED lights? Well, the answer comes three-fold. LED (Light Emitting Diode) lighting is brighter, draws less power from your system than a common bulb, and also, runs cooler for longer life. United Pacific Industries offers LED Conversion Taillight products for a broad application of vehicles with varied numbers of LEDs in each application. Each taillight assembly (sold separately) offers plug-and-play installation into an 1157-type connector. The electronics of each taillight are sealed to the lens in epoxy for moisture and corrosion resistance, while a solid-state circuit board is engineered for any 12-volt electrical system. Follow along as our conversion only took about thirty minutes to complete.
You are almost finished. But when using LED taillights, the amount of power going through the switch is very little. In most cases, there is not enough heat generated for the original factory-style thermal flasher to cause the bi-metal switch to break contact. This means your turn signal lights stay on and will not blink. United Pacific Industries also has the proper electronic flasher unit that is necessary for your install during this upgrade.
We wanted to see how much brighter these new tail lamps are and will use Lumens, the measure of the brightness of a light that is the SI unit of luminous flux, equal to the amount of light emitted per second, for our comparison. Most older vehicle tail lamp applications used one or more #1157 dual-element light bulbs. During our install in this 1964 Chevelle that had one #1157 per side, we discovered that most reference sources listed a single #1157 light bulb emitting 38 Lumens at LOW (Parking or Tail Lamp) and 402 Lumens at HIGH (Brake or Turn signal) bulb brightness. The Taillight conversion from UPI for a 1964 Chevelle has 23 LEDs and is estimated to produce 248 Lumens at LOW and 496 Lumens at HIGH.
Documenting our before and after LED Taillight Conversion, we hit the streets at 8:30 pm to photograph for a visual comparison.
In regular taillamp mode, a marked improvement was observed.
Brake light activation offered a greater perceived improvement in visibility.
We are excited to get back out there on the streets. Cruising with the added confidence of having better visibility at the rear of our ride with these new LED Taillights will make it all the more enjoyable. This simple install, in our estimation, is worth every minute in the added assurance of safety and visibility in keeping others off your tail.
Of course, check back with us for more installs like this one, and head over to United Pacific Industries’ website if you’d like to pick up a set for yourself.