The Dodge Challenger Message Board

This post could also have gone under body.

Doing the tail panel of the 71, and putting the tail lights together, i noticed that the factory reflector paint inside the bezels was not very good. So i sanded inside the concave areas with wet and dry and then polished with metal polish to give a mirror finish. The difference in brightness of the lenses is amazing. I am a bit worried though that with time, the brightness will dull off. The sure fix is getting some tin foil and carefully cutting to shape and gluing in, shiny side out. Works almost as well. (I did this method with the front indicators -they are bright now!)

That's made one he'll of an improvement

I had my tail lights converted to led's to make a near Amber indicator light come thru the red brake lens, worked brilliant, see if i can post up some pix

That did make quite an improvement. Possibly a clear preservative would prevent them from oxidizing.

Adrian Worman wrote:That's made one he'll of an improvement

I had my tail lights converted to led's to make a near Amber indicator light come thru the red brake lens, worked brilliant, see if i can post up some pix

thats interesting. Must be powerful bright amber to overpower the red lens.

?Why not just put the amber led (or even amber bulb) inside the reverse light, so it looks normal white when off but shines through brilliant orange when indicating. That's what we do down here, not sure what the rules in the UK about vintage cars and reverse lights are though. I think in my State however, they have even allowed a flashing brake light as per the US cars, to remain on cars pre 72.

Jon wrote:That did make quite an improvement. Possibly a clear preservative would prevent them from oxidizing.

thanks Jon, yes i considered spraying a clear coat over them. Maybe i should have, well they are all in now and i don't feel like pulling them apart again! I polished up the rallye hood nostrils the same way and they took some time to dull down even when always exposed to the air, so i am hoping that these reflector ones will last a long time being sealed up inside the lenses and new gaskets etc.

That's how they were but I wanted to get the reverse lights back and not have a weak amber light.
These are inside the red lense and the LEDs are as clear as anything, if you shine a coloured LED thru a different coloured lense it still shows the original, even thru a really dark panel.
See if I can piccy it clearly and post it up

Yeah i'd be really interested in seeing a few pics of that, wow, its amazing how that works, never woulda thought...

Good idea keeping the rev lights standard, because they really do a good job of lighting up the back when you need it in the dark. Esp now i have polished the inside, they are very bright even with standard 21W bulbs. Dunno what our regulations were thinking of in Aust when they used the rear orange indicators as rev lights (up to about 1980!). Cos you can't see a thing when two orange lights are on.

By the way, here's some more pictures of another project i did in the same line of thought. I am putting 68 Dart Tail lights into my Valiant Hardtop. I think they look better and more unique in Aust. I am using amber bulbs inside the reverse light and where our orange indicator lenses were (in the rear bumper), i have put in clear lenses from a previous model and wired them to be reverse lights. Lot of work, but i like being different.

Our Valiant hardtop was a 69 Dart so we got the 69 rear tail treatment. But using the 68 lenses on the 69 buckets meant i had to fabricate a sealed light shield from sheet metal (an old VHS recorder case actually) so that one taillight bulb (now an indicator) would only have light directed to the clear reverse lens. Confused? The pictures show it hopefully.

Sorry for the long post !

Lot of work but it looks good