well a friend wanted to give my dart a small present so i got a set of red multi led front lights. they seem brighter than the stock amber bulbs. and look an evil red @ night. they also seem to flash slightly faster than stock when i have my hazzards on. i have had them for over a week now and i really like them any reason i shouldn't keep them. cause i think they are super cool! but @ 15.00 each wow!

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"Marilyn" 64 Dart GT & "Stella" 64 Valiant V100 Sedan - 63 Norton Project

MiDi, I don't think we've had occasion to talk on this level yet before, but I am an automotive lighting and safety consultant. You need to please go get those LEDs out of your car in a big hurry — like before you drive it again. They are extremely unsafe to you and those you share the roads with, for a couple of different reasons:

1) Except as special warning lamps on emergency vehicles, red light is not allowed at the front of the car, only at the back. This is critically important so that other drivers can tell at an instant glance whether they're looking at the front or the rear of a vehicle. Having to look for more details ("H'mm...do I see a tailpipe, which would make it the rear? Or wait, no, I see headlights, so it must be the front") is out of the question. The recognition needs to be instantaneous, whether it's bright and sunny out or foggy, or dark, raining, etc. The only light allowed to emanate from the front of the car is white (headlamps, auxiliary fog or driving lamps, daytime running lights, parking lights), yellow (auxiliary fog lamps, daytime running lights, parking lights), or amber (parking lights, turn signals, daytime running lights). At the rear, the reflectors, tail lamps and brake lights must be red, the turn signals must be red or amber, the reversing (back-up) lights must be white (and that's the only white light allowed to show to the rear; even the licence plate light has to be shielded such that it is not directly visible to the rear).

2) Even if your new LEDs up front were putting out amber light, "LED bulbs" like this don't perform safely in lamps designed to take bulbs. Please see this thread for more info, this Allpar page for a comparison of LED bulbs like yours vs. brighter filament bulbs, and this thread for more discussion on how LEDs might be retrofitted safely and effectively to your car.

If you want to customise or upgrade any of the lights on your car, there are plenty of options for doing so in ways that give a real improvement in function, and there are even ways of doing it that give various different kinds of improvement (or at least change) in appearance. You can easily and cheaply do some plain old maintenance that'll improve the existing lights' function. You can have better headlights, brighter signals, LED marker lights, you can add daytime running lights, an LED center 3rd brake light, you can get custom lenses that give you separate red brake/tail and amber rear turn signal lenses...lots of options. Maybe better to start by getting the turn blinker system working...?

Seriously, though, please go get those red LEDs out of the front signals on your car. They really are a serious crash hazard, and we'd rather have you around here for a long time so we can laugh at your car's interior

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

ok dan,

i'll move the red leds to the rear and when they burn out i'll switch back to bulbs. and yeah i have been looking @ your web page for months wishing i could afford all the cool stuff u have. i also like Ceej's headlamp setup.i even read a pdf you wrote to the NHTSA a few months back. i also noticed some stuff you wrote on the foundationpc / dodge dart site.i will be switching my front side marker lights to turn siginals via your wiring digaram.but that's when i figure out this damn turn siginal problem.

i kinda figured you would have an issue with these so that's why i asked

i also wanna get when i can afford it a center high mount rear brake light.

even tho i drive like an escaped mental patient on crack i am all about saftey. thanks for the heads up!

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"Marilyn" 64 Dart GT & "Stella" 64 Valiant V100 Sedan - 63 Norton Project

No, move them to your desk drawer or your trash can and switch back to bulbs now. They are not safe or effective even in rear lamps. Please read all the links I provided above. The '71-'73 Dart tail lamps are small and dim enough as it is; the "LED bulbs" make them effectively much smaller and dimmer. Not a good idea, please don't do it.
Such is life in the big city; all it takes is one driver like this and then everyone has to drive like that just to keep up and prevent being run off the road. That said, traffic in Seattle or Portland is much calmer and more polite than here in Toronto. Whenever I visit out there in the Northwest, I have to be very careful not to drive like I'm back home because what's necessary for survival back here is rude and unduly aggressive out there...everything's relative!

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

LMAO, "escaped mental patient on crack" LOL.!! What a visual. Been in a few dust storms and pulling to the side of the road and turning of my lights saved my butt. I totally see Dan's point.

hey dan what do you think about using led's for dash lights?

i would love a bright indigo blue look ... i can prolly return my front red led lights and get credit twards this idea / project.

and yes i am gonna mod this dart in every possable way until its truly one of a kind. i already have a black super bee stripe i am waiting to put on, and after the super six / interior work its getting a small scoop.

neil

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"Marilyn" 64 Dart GT & "Stella" 64 Valiant V100 Sedan - 63 Norton Project

Go for it, just be advised it usually doesn't work as well as you hope it will, 'cause LEDs are highly directional, but the dash lighting on our cars works by bouncing the spherical output from a filament bulb off all the surfaces we can't see (back of the bezel, back of the speedo face, front of the instrument cluster housing, etc.) to illuminate the gauges from the sides. It also doesn't work to replace the turn signal indicator on cars that have only one green indicator rather than one for left and one for right. This is because the single-indicator system runs power through the bulb with one polarity for a LH turn and the other for RH, but diodes only work with one polarity.

Other indicators and telltales? Yeah, no real harm. I have an extra-bright red LED in the oil pressure warning light of my truck. It illuminates part of the oil pan icon. I have another one in the "BRAKE" warning light of the same truck. It illuminates most of the "R" and part of the "A". I still have a regular bulb in the "FASTEN BELTS" light, which is much brighter and easier to read than either of the two LEDified indicators.
See here

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

thanks a ton dan!

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"Marilyn" 64 Dart GT & "Stella" 64 Valiant V100 Sedan - 63 Norton Project