March 2004. Going high-tech for the rear lights. Original lights did not incorporate indicator lights (the car uses trafficators). In the name of safety I decided to construct a LED version of the rear light, incorporating indicator lights, but stayed original on the outside. 20 hours of work and 90 U.K pounds later everything was working!
I constructed 2 printed circuit boards, one with a matrix of high-intensity LEDs and the other with the driving circuitry (constant current sources).
The printed circuit boards were made to fit into the original light housing.
Final assembly is ready to be fitted to the car. The holes at the rear, where the cable is coming out, were later sealed with silicone.
Brightness is significantly improved compared to the original 21/5W bulb solution.
A modern switching unit has been used for the indicator lights, however, it had to be modified because the power consumption of the LEDs is very small and triggered the switching unit into thinking that one of the bulbs was burnt out, which then flashed too quickly... The original load resistor (wire covered with white fabric protection) shown on the left photo, has been substituted with an array of 4 parallel resistors of double total resistance compared to the original, right photo.
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