LED Lights

When I took off the bumper, the flasher plastic clips/connectors broke off.  I looked everywhere to find a replacement and even toyed with the idea of fitting in standard wiring harness but since the flasher casing was metal that wasn't going to work. OK, it was a good excuse to replace with LED flashers.  In addition, WA State law requires cars to have side lights as well.  So I bought some off of EBay and got a great deal.  The only thing I noticed was that in some cases the white wire was the ground - not the black.  I would encourage everyone to test your LEDs right out of the box so you have no doubt.

The original flashers were mounted in the bumper and were approx 5.25 X 1.75 inches.  The best I could find was 2X6 flush mount.  I took the old ones out and then traced the pattern on a 1/2 inch piece of plywood. This way I could use the original screws to hold the wood in the bumper then drill my holes in the wood for the flasher to attach to it. I also had to cut a little off the black rubber on the sides to make the full 6 inch width work.

The other thing I caught was the flasher requires two power wires going to it.  I found a great wiring diagram/PDF at EZ2Wire which showed how that was supposed to happen.  The site I got the EZ Wire harness from didn't have anything like this.

http://www.goindesign.com/w4r/EZ2Wire-Manual.pdf

This is very similar to what I am using.

Here's the side lights, also flush mount.  The thought of having to cut an exact fit hole in the fiberglass for a side light a flasher is a level of expertise I'm not ready for.

  This was mounted six inches from the fender, which is approx halfway between the fender and bumper.

I also added some electrical panel buss bars so all the grounds will be in one place.  This makes finding any ground faults easy.  They say that is the number problem in electrical connections. These buss bars have a 10 ga wire that connects to the chasis.  There will be five total, 2 in the front, 2 in the back and one long one in the driver's side, by the fuse panel.

Next time we'll see the rear side lights, back up, 3rd brake light, etc....