"Lucky's" Rear is All Red

C

chrisyork

Active Member
No, he hasn't been naughty - I don't believe in corporal punishment anyway!

He's had a couple of mods to make him safer to drive in modern driving conditions.

I've always thought that there wasn't really enough area of red tail lamp showing at the back of a P6 to make him normally visible - especially on motorways - to those accustomed to modern cars. And having been tail-ended a couple of times, I refuse point blank to drive a car that doesn't have a third high level stop lamp. Both problems present significant challenges on a P6.

I figured the high level stop lamp couldn't go in the back window. At the top it gets in the way of the view from the rear view mirror. At the bottom it is hidden by the boot mounted spare. I briefly toyed with mounting something on top of the roof and decided it would look gross! Finally I tracked down a lamp that mounts to a horizontal flat surface to go on the boot lid. This one is normally to be found against the back of the hood on a convertible Jaguar XK8 (previous model to curent) It is nicely shaped and just sneaks under the back edge of the spare wheel when the boot mount is on. Accepting that the boot looks cleaner without, I do think it looks as if it was made for the car!

Tail lamp area is more dificult. What I have finished up doing is to fit the tail lamp glasses from an early S1, with the reflectors below the tail lamps, onto the carcase of an S2 rear lamp cluster. No mods required, they are completely interchangeable. Then I peeled the foil backing off the back of the reflector and wired the revesing lamp bulbs in with the tail lamps. The photo shows the car with the n/s having a 21w bulb and the o/s with a 5w bulb. I think I need about 10 to 15w to match the illuminance of the original tail lamps, so am in the process of sourcing those. Of couse that displaces the reversing lamps. I found a nice new pair of classic Lucas lamps to mount under the bumper and have one as a reversing lamp and the other with a red bulb in it as a rear fog.

Finally I thought it might look nice with US spec red indicator lenses to complete the set. Easily sourced from Cyprus (!) and now fitted with yellow LED bulbs so that they actually flash amber rather than red.










Chris
 

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As I said to you at the RP6C National 'you beat me to it'. I've always disliked the series 2 reflectors, they are coming off and the holes welded up this winter, and I think the early series 1 lights with integrated reflectors are a far more elegant unit especially with red indicator lenses too. My lamp units are a bit crusty at the bottom though and this becomes uncovered once the reverse lens is removed.

I'd always assumed that amber light wouldn't shine through the red lens as it should only allow the red wavelength through, but it's obviously not a perfect filter as it seems to work on your car.

What type of flasher relay did you use? The 2 pin ones don't seem to be that common.

Have you considered leds for the brake/tail lamps?
 
I picked up an electronic flasher quite easily on Ebay. And as for LED stop/tail bulbs - you're looking at them! The LED bulbs I bought have about 3 LED's facing directly backwards, but also a "tree" of side pointing LED's that shine into the cone of the existing reflector. This makes the light throw through the lens pretty well identical to a conventional tungston bulb.

Chris
 
Interestingly I ran my old convertible without reflectors for years, in fact all the time I had it so about 14 years, never had a problem and nobody ever mentioned it. :LOL:
 
Just had a look on ebay & the prices aren't high at all. Much less than I was told last time I enquired. Though the very inexpensive ones seem to be dealers from Hong Kong & China.
 
Chris;
brilliant mod.! The trend for 2000+ vehicles is to have relatively large rear lights set at about eye-height for following drivers; having more square inches of "red" stop lights on the back of your P6, with brighter LED's + together with a high-mount stop lamp is a v. sensible improvement

I suspect in "Stock" form now; comparing the P6 to more modern motors, because of their relatively small taillights, the "vehicle may appear further away than it actually is" (if I may paraphrase the warning that's etched onto USA rear-vision mirrors ), to your average driver, esp. at night or with reduced visibility; with the unfortunate consequence it will encourage people to follow too close... something your modification will go some way towards fixing

Thanks for this idea!

GW

move.jpg


Daihatsu MOVE, a Japanese 2005 domestic model; stoplights from around the belt-line up to the roof, has reflectors + a high-mount LED lamp too, despite this being a 660cc Micro-van it has about 10 times more "red *rse presence" with it's brakes on at night than you-know-what :wink:
 
Hi Chris,

Having just fitted S1 red rear indicator lenses I was a bit bummed to realise I had missed the word "LED" in this thread (and "yellow" too), and fitted standard 21W amber bulbs to them. The lenses look great on the white car, but the indicators obviously flash red. I wanted to ask if you remember how many LEDs each of your new yellow bulbs has? I see a choice of 24 or 36(!) on eBay.

Regards

Tor
 
Hello Chris,

The light treatment does look quite interesting. I have seen a couple of Rovers locally with stop lights mounted at the base of the rear window, and with no boot mounted spare it does not present any problems.

In fact I can't ever recall seeing a P6/P6B locally with a spare mounted on the boot, although I have seen boots with the motif.

Ron.
 
Fitted the LEDs and the result is more or less as I hoped for, maybe not quite as bright as the rest but I think it'll work. Only thing is, I assume I will need to add resistance to the rear indicator wires so I can keep the original flasher with its pleasant sing-song sound - right now the indicators don't flash. Any ideas what I might need? :?
 
Hi Tor

On Lucky I used an electronic flasher can. The noise is more or less as per original and it avoids the hassle of fittng resistors - and preserves the agvantage of lower current consumption.

If you do want to go the resistor route, pm me as I also bought a set of those before i opted for the electronic flasher.

Chris
 
My old age is starting to show as I know the answer to this one somewhere locked up in the grey cells. A few years ago (not that many :oops: ) I designed a two terminal electronic flasher unit to flash light bulbs at whatever frequency or wattage was desired by the user, great wee circuit, then the inevitable happened and the project required that the signs (that was the origional purpose, I think :LOL: ) that were flashed would be LED signs, from memory to get the flasher to work I needed to put in a reversed diode in the load so that the flasher unit thought that it was seeing a constant resistive load rather than single current direction AC load....... bugger this really for me is a demonstration of what a senior moment really is and worse to come :(

Graeme
 
Hi Chris,

OK thanks, I'll find an electronic flasher or two to try and see. Is it worth visiting a scrapper's or are these only common in newish cars??

Graeme, I've yet to join the ranks of quadragenarians and it only takes a wee bit of load for me to open the fridge door and completely forget why I've just done that. Which means that, you're more than likely fine and I'm in trouble! :wink:
 
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