Topic: Re-wiring the Sky front blinkers to the headlamp parking lights

[Arabas]

yes we are required to have parking lights in Europe.
they even made a law lately that all new cars should come with daytime running lights, hence the LED daylights every maker (first Audi) incorporated in their headlights.

in real world, almost nobody use their parking lights. i prefer to use my headlights even when it is sunny. now, i let it on the auto and they only light up when it gets dark.
nobody will give a damn about my parking lights (99,99% won't even notice), not even during inspection... if i tell them: "Hey it's an American car, this is the way it works, go figure buddy", they will most probably say, "Ohhh, i see"

however, like i said, i am interested in that only if it an easy and fully reversible mod

[ophidia31]

Edit#2:

Think I figured it out. Looked at the schematic and there was no reason why cutting the brown wire at the h-light bulb and cutting the blue wire at the park/turn signal harness would cause that hyper flash. That is until I tested the bulbs themselves. Seems the parking light filaments of both park/turn bulbs and h-light bulbs are 3ohm and the turn signal filament of the park/turn bulb is .7ohm. My guess for the reason behind the hyperflash is that the 3ohm load of the h-light bulb is just high enough to act like a blown bulb. The reason the parking light isnt effected is because its ran by a relay and runs EVERY parking light in the car, which is why youd have no indication of one of those being blown until you see it or someone else does and tells you about it. And a blown turn signal will hyperflash because its seeing a high resistance.

At least thats my guess. Im not super well versed in that part of the vehicles electronics, but like I said, the schematic shows the two turn signal wires go from the bcm, to a junction in the underhood fuse box and then out to their designated lights. No other stops along the way. 

This is what I had tried.

[ophidia31]

Should have my amber 7443 bulbs and sockets for the switch waiting for me when I get home. Monday Ill be modifying the parking light opening to fit the larger 7443 bulb and socket. Pictures will be taken of the process and possibly video of them in action. (Never took and uploaded video of anything before so not makng any promises on that part)

For those wondering, I thought about it and it will be a semi-reversible modification. What I mean is you can just use the parking light side of the 7443 bulb/socket or get a 7440 bulb/socket to wire in to use as the parking light and then just reinstall the factory turnsignal/foglight assembly back in the bumper.

[ophidia31]

Allright guys, heres some somewhat results. First going to state issues that I see. One is that the socket wont fit into the headlight housing without building the housing out. The socket hits off of the back of the inner chrome piece. The second issue is the heat that is being thrown off of the incandescant bulb. I just dont trust it being on for extended periods even though its just the 5w parking filament. The bulb sits too close to the tri-leg diffuser thing and I think It may melt it over time. Good news is LED lights will work perfect here because of that and that both parking and turn signal lights are definitly bright enough to be noticed by other motorists and see no other issues. I didnt bother going ahead with my other light because of the two mentioned issues so I just epoxied the little light back in for the time being. And finally some pictures. They are both highly visible from the side and definitly from the front. The headlight actually has three slash marks to reflect light sideways to aid in side visibility aside frmo the reflection off of the housing itself (probably lower on black lights). Ill definitly be doing this with LEDS sometime later but for now, you be the judge. 

Parking Light:


Turn Signal:

[kennysabarese]

I like it!

[Arabas]

looks good!!

[ophidia31]

Thanks guys. Probably going to get some of the cheaper led lights sooner than later just to have this done so I can make the block off plates for the bumper. Was all excited to do this to get rid of the lights in the bumper and then the snafu with the heat thats produced from the bulb. Oh well, have to expect this stuff to happen when no one (that I know of) ever did this before so you learn from their mistakes.

[miller11386]

be sure to write up a how to thread. I am very interested in this mod

[ophidia31]

Its going to be hard to do a write up since its somewhat on the fly right now. I got some led lights in but they are way too dim. They were the only ones that would fit without any more modification. They were only $10 for the pair but was worth a shot. When the parking light circuit of them was on, you can hardly see a difference to when the turn signal flashed. Theyre garbage. I went on a review where the person said they were "too bright". (I should have known better since it was the only review too) Either that person is a vampire or they dont know what bright really is. So, the search continues....

[Arabas]

ophidia, would something like this work on our kappas, in replacement of the turn signal we already have?
my idea is to eliminate the whole front bumper turn light and replace it with this

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/PONTIAC-FOG-LIGHT-WHITE-W-AMBER-TURN-SIGNAL-LIGHT-6-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem1e6556913fQQitemZ130549190975QQptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories

[ophidia31]

Yep, that would work too. Can also take your light apart and put a strip along the bottom and have that work as a turn signal as well.

[kennysabarese]

That bar light is not a bad idea at all.

[Arabas]

is there a cable-adapter form 3157 (or 4157) which is the turn lights to 5w5 socket?
the idea is to connect the male end (3157) to the female part where the turn light is and the other end (female 5w5) to connect it into the headlight with a w5w amber bulb.

anybody has seen something like this or am i just dreaming?

[ophidia31]

Not that I know of, but shouldnt be too hard to make one. Autolumination carries empty bases. http://autolumination.com/3157_3156.htm Scroll almost to the bottom and youll see them there. Find a replacement socket for a w5w, have as long of a lead as you need, solder some solid wire to use as the contacts of the base, epoxy everything into the base and then youll have your 3157 to w5w adapter. Alot of work when you can just splice and solder if you as me.  To return to normal, just undo what you did and tape it so no water or anything gets into the wire.

[Arabas]

thx ophidia! If only i had your electric skills to do it. i may give it a shot.
one more thought is this... the side turn signal is w5w (194 bulb), right? so if one can make or find a 194 dual splitter, you can plug it where the side turn light plugs and then put one end to the side turn bulb and the other one in the parking light.
if this is doable, i believe it is the easiest way for this mod

[ophidia31]

Since it seems you have kind of figured out how to do this over seas (from your other post) Im glad since it kind of takes it off my chest to try and figure out how in the world to do a right up for this so others can do this sweet mod. As mentioned in the thread I did with taking apart and painting the foglight/turnsignal housing, its hard for me to do a mod and also take pictures of it to be able to do a write up because I get excited to do this stuff. All that remains is a final picture when Im done.

Which brings me to this. Glad to announce that I have pretty much completed the retrofit with a still setback with the led bulbs. The thing is, alot of the bulbs fire sideways and also forwards. What we need a bulb that fires sideways and backwards instead of forwards. This is because of the large bulb in a small reflective housing. Its not setup right to reflect properly. As it stands, during the day youre lucky if you can see the reflection but when it starts to get dark out and at night its clearly visible to other drivers. I have found some bulbs that seem to be able to be modded by resoldering the leds that fire forward to reversing them to fire back at the reflector so it sheds more light where its needed. I feel these are the solution to what I was looking for. Yes, there are those crazy bright bulbs with 40+ leds but they are also larger than what will fit in the space we have. And yes, you can bump the socket out by building out on the headlight housing, but that increases the difficulty of the mod and also the chance of the socket mounting solution failure. My solution is a simple abs spacer epoxied to the headlight. Having something that moves the socket further off the light puts more strain on that bond that connects the mounting solution to the headlight. A risk I dont want to take because I hate having to fix stuff down the road.

So on with lights, the wiring of the new light is also kind of reversable. I cut the plug that runs to the turn/fog housing, extended the three wires (ground/turnsignal/parkinglight) that are needed and ran them up to the new socket. You can also tap into these three wires if you dont want to cut off the plug for your turn/fog lights, but I dont plan on using them ever again. But resoldering them is always possible. I also installed the load resistors down on the black metal bracing for the bumper. I can take pictures tommorrow of all this and with everything finished up so you can kind of see what you need to do.

I cant really help any of you guys out on the bumper block off since you all have the redline or gt (redline) bumper grills. I had orignally planned on making it all black abs like the drift vehicle but found it a little too bland. (even for my tastes. lol) But today when I was doing the full block off instead of the half like Ive had, I decided to put the chrome spear back onto the bumper. Im glad I did because I think it looks badass. Alot better looking than stock if you ask me. Anyway, what I did to do my block off was make a trace of the opening on some paper and then just transfered it to some abs, cut it out and put it on the car. The stock foglight/turn housing and factory grill are still on the car. I used double side tape on the housing and the spear on the grill part. It would be a giant pain in the ass to try and replicate the mounting points use for the stock grill and light housing and make it look the least bit good. In the end, I decided to use the stock stuff to my advantage to make it easier to accomplish my goal. In the end, its up to you guys to figure it out on your redline/gt bumpers. If you dont care about the halfassed brake ducts, you can always buy a 2.4 grill and spear and probably make it worlds easier on yourself.

So, all that said, here is what my car now looks like minus the black painted headlights which I hope to accomplish in the next few weeks. I do apologize again because Im not very helpful with showing the process for this mod but will try my best to help others out with it if they need it.

[kennysabarese]

I like the way this looks. Personally I would put a mesh grille there and lose the chrome, maybe paint it body color or remove it altogether.

Awesome!

[ophidia31]

Mesh would work too but I wanted it all blocked off. I was thinking of painting all the chrome a different color, but until I get the lights painted to see how it looks then. That would be the deciding factor on what I do next. With the lights out of the bumper and the headlights blacked out, i think that small bit of chrome on the grill, hood vents and spears wont bother me as much as it did stock. The red saturn backing will be painted black as well.

[kennysabarese]

Can't wait to see

[Kelu]

I like how it looks also, is better than with the blinkers & fog lights in lower area of the bumper, looks more clean imho.

Congrats and thank you for sharing.

[ophidia31]

Here are some pictures of it all finished up.

All together and ziptied to the factory harness and ran down to the bumper support area.



A shot of the abs spacer/adapter. You cant really see the lack of space inside the light area because of the light shining back through, but there isnt much in there. If the new bulb that Im modifying doesnt work out or isnt bright enough, I have plans of either cutting that tripost thing out or concocting some sort of larger spacer/adapter to fit the larger expensive 52+mm length bulbs in there. Expensive yes, but they will be bright enough. Right now just trying to do as little modifications as possible with as little money as possible.



And lastly a shot of the load resistor (gold thing) mountied to the front bracing and also the wiring for the light. Wire the resistor after the plug so there wasn any necessary extra movement on the connections at the resistor. Reused the factory plug at the foglight housing and then soldered everything up put some splitloom on and called it a day.

[kennysabarese]

Wow... nice work

[ophidia31]

Allright, here is a somewhat writeup of what needs to be done to do this mod. this was done on a whim so I really didnt think to take step by step pictures. Maybe the next person to attempt this mod will do a better job. But some of these things Im talking about can be seen in the pictures throughout this thread.

You need to enlarge the opening in the light to accommidate the thicker bulb. I found that, when you look into the opening, there is a barrier that looks like a ring on the back of the inner light housing. Enlarging it to where you would meet the walls of that ring should be large enough. If that isnt, you need at least 21mm room to fit the led bulb into the light with some wiggle room. I dont recall if I stopped at the barrier ring or enlarged it more. Plus, you also need to go slowly so you dont kick up any debris into the headlight. You can also go as far as taking the lights apart so you dont have to worry about anything getting stuck inside. I didnt and went too fast on one light and got a couple pieces of plastic curly-q's stuck to various parts inside the light. Anyway, take your bulb and test fit to see if it will fit into the light. If so, continue on. If not, get back to hogging.

Next you need to make your spacers. I ended up with taking 1/8" abs sheet and cutting out circles 1.5" in diameter. In total you will need 14 circles. If youre smart you would get a hole cutting bit that size and would make your life a hell of alot easier. Me, I took the hard way and cut/ground them all down with snips and a bench grinder. The other nice thing is you will have you absolute center already drilled out where I had to go and figure that crap out, yes, the hard way again. lol

So, now that you have your circles made out, takes some abs cement and glue only six of them together. I put the cement on them and then clamped them in a vise for 30sec. After you make your two spacers that way, you need to make the adapter that will hold the 7443 socket. You will need to take some measurements to find the opening needed to get the socket into the adapter. Once you make your opening and can freely insert the socket, put the socket into the adapter and notice where the four notches are. Either mark the spots in your memory or use some form of marking utensil and mark the adapter with the four spots. What I did was just took my dremel and made the notches slowly, test fitting after grinding a little away. You dont want to make them too big or you will go past where the seal on the light socket is and will need to start all over.

Now here is where you can do this several ways to accomplish the end product. What I personally did was take one of the short fat step drill bits and go right through the spacer. Whatever way you do this, all that you need to know is that the hole in the spacer needs to be larger than the hole in the adapter plate. Reason being so you can accommidate the four notches and to be able to turn the socket in the adapter. Once you have the hole in the spacer with enough clearance for those notches, take some abs glue and attach the adapter to the spacer. You dont have to do this but i did to add some sheen, i took some of the abs cement and went around the outside of the spacer and set it aside for an hour to dry.

Now you will have to cut away some of the ribbing on the light. If you try and put your spacer on, you may run into an issue of it being offest from the opening in the light. This I have a picture of and you can see what I cut away. You will also need to cut away the ridge on the light where the old w5w socket was. After making the clearance on the light, take some sandpaper and rough up the mating surfaces and wipe them clean. All thats left is to use some epoxy and attach the spacer to the light. I used some loctite 5min epoxy that i picked up at lowes. Just make sure that everything is lined up so the bulb can go into the light or youll need to remove the spacer and start over.

Once your spacers are all done and attached, now for the wiring.

At the turnsignal/foglight housing, there is a 4 pin plug with black, brown, blue and pink wires in it. We will be using the black (ground), brown (parking light) and blue (turn signal) wires. Now this is depending on what you want to do. I cut the plug off and soldered my new wires on to run up to the socket. You can just tap into the wires at the plug if you so wish. Once you made your connections at the plug, run your wires up to the new spot on the headlight and make your connections on your new socket. If yours isnt labeled what wires do each job, you will need to test them to see what wire at the socket does what. The last thing to do, aside from cleaning everything up and making it look nice, is adding in the load resistor across the turnsignal wire and ground to cnacel out the hyperflash that you will get from removing the incandescant bulb from the bumper. If you want to keep the light in the bumper you can do that too as the led wont put enough load to cause problems. 

Now here is the final spacer needed for the larger 45led 7443 bulb I ordered from superbrightleds.com. After seeing the video of the civic that used these bulbs, I knew I should have got them in the first place instead of putzing around with cheaper alternatives. While these bulbs are big, the new spacer i made puts the silver ring of the bulb right at the back of the reflector so no surface is wasted and every inch available used for lighting purposes. Like I mentioned, all other pictures are above, but here is one with the new spacer added and a little runny epoxy that i need to clean up. I will have pictures and video posted tommorrow of the final lights tommorrow.



Edit:
Here is the parking lights before with the crappy cheap led bulbs. Yes they are on in this picture.



And here are the parking lights with the new superbrightled bulbs. Big difference and can even kind of see the passenger side through the suns reflection.



Video of the hazards/turn signals with crap bulbs.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377&amp;intl_lang=en-us&amp;photo_secret=1fd931ceda&amp;photo_id=6002587549" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377&amp;intl_lang=en-us&amp;photo_secret=1fd931ceda&amp;photo_id=6002587549</a>

Video and walk around of the hazard/turn signals with the new brighter bulbs.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377&amp;intl_lang=en-us&amp;photo_secret=79cbf6f406&amp;photo_id=6026729938" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377&amp;intl_lang=en-us&amp;photo_secret=79cbf6f406&amp;photo_id=6026729938</a>

[Arabas]

Ophidia where did you get the abs plastic sheet from and how many $$?
dimensions?

thx

[ophidia31]

I just had scraps here at work, but you can get in from parts-express pretty cheap. Well, dont know about the shipping to you. http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=265-948