The last few days I’ve been shoveling 5 yards of bark and 5 more yards of red lava rock. With that out of the way I headed back to the truck and started working on the porthole lights again. My initial selection of lights was 16mm LED “bolts” for the turn signals, and 6mm LED bolts for the parking lights. All was well for about a month, when the driver’s side sequencer failed to illuminate lamp #4, and coincidentally one of the parking light LED’s also failed.
The sequencer is guaranteed for life, so it was sent back and a new one was provided in a week or so. If the installation had been a typical brake light system in a trunk, I may have restored the sequencers. But since this is mounted up inside the rear of the hood, working on it is miserably painful for both my knees and back. So I deleted the sequencers for now. If my knees ever get better and I find the inspiration, I may put them back in.
I originally selected the 6mm LED bolts because they were roughly one half the intensity of the turn signal bulbs. I discovered a couple of things. The 6mm versions are very delicate while the larger units are very hardy. Also, they actually put out the same light output as the bigger units, but they come with the addition of a resistor on the power line dropping their output. I also found out the same result can be achieved by wiring multiple bulbs in series.
Here’s a close up look of the 6mm LED’s. In the first shot both the 16mm turn signal lamp and 6mm parking lamp are off (these are on the passenger side of the hood):
In this shot just the parking lamp is lit:
From some angles it lights up the porthole better, but since there is no lens on the LED, it basically shoots light straight out the hole.
In order to improve illumination without blinding other drivers, I pulled all of the 6mm LED’s and replaced them with 11mm versions for the parking circuit. In order to easily drop the light output, I wired the parking lamps in four pairs of two. In this configuration the output is roughly half the turn signal output, but since they have lenses, the portholes light up much better as the light is spread around the perimeter of the housing.
Here is the front and back of a porthole mounted in the vise. The hole for the 6mm lamp was filled with a plastic snap in plug. The new hole for the 11mm lamp was mounted to the downside depending on which side of the truck the porthole was being installed (for better daytime reflection):
This shot shows how much bigger the 11mm (on the left) is compared to the hole vacated by the 6mm lamp:
And here’s the new configuration shown mounted on the driver’s side of the hood:
I also finally got around to snapping the clutch pedal bumper in place, and pulled the glove box emblem off for black paint detailing:
