If you went with some kinda of a bright reflective material like flexible chrome stuff for a reflector. Or at each LED you can put a cup so each one would look bigger. LED's are the way of the future! Very efficient.

By sdcvcc (68.101.197.93) on Friday, November 19, 2004 - 06:15 pm:

man has a thing against LED's. If they are done right they look great. people use them all the time on custom rides. havent you seen a tricked out street rod with LEDstrips or 2" taillights?
Looks clean.

By Chaffneue (Chaffneue) (142.104.250.115) on Friday, November 19, 2004 - 12:44 pm:

Why? bulbs cost like $1.75 for 4 and I've still got the ones from 1977 in mine. LED's are lame, hard to see in daylight unless they're flashing and you might get a ticket for driving with homecooked ones, since they won't be DOT. I've tried all sorts of LED products and none of them come close to the festoons in terms of brightness.. especially the halogen ones.. and usually that's because the lenses are made to properly diffuse incandescant light, not focused and directional light. The only reason to use LED bulbs is if you need an extremely low power draw. Some flasher relays wont even work with LED's, since they use the filament in the bulb as a leak off resistor for the capacitor in the relay. You'd need to buy an electronic flasher in this case. Leave LEDs for your computers.

-Richard

By farenheight101 (24.69.255.203) on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 11:34 pm:

I was thinkin about drilling holes for LED's in teh existing lens then gluegunning them in or something.

By Chaffneue (Chaffneue) (66.183.190.188) on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 10:41 pm:

not a big fan.. are you going electric or something? why the LED lights? If you're set on modifying the lights, I'd say find some nice hot rod taillights and french them in then build a small board to fit in the light if you insist on LEDs (which are a hge waste of cash in my experience).. it's a little more work, but it'll look a little more custom and a little less like trailer lights.

-Richard

By Dave (206.172.136.164) on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 09:59 pm:

Personaly I dont like the look.

By sdcvcc (68.101.197.93) on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 06:26 pm:

I DO like the vertical setup. But I disagree with the twim panel looking ugly. I am trying to modernize certain aspects of the car in and out anyways. If I dont feel confident in making the corners contour niecly, I am going to make replacement tails to fit the stock area utilizing 4" LED's and a custom carbon fiber housing similar to alot of aftermarket Altezza shapes without the generic look.

By lazy (165.228.57.19) on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 07:02 am:

you'd also get a stepped tail light thing happening thanks to the slope-back of the hatch - which would probably make it look even better.

By lazy (165.228.57.19) on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 06:58 am:

neither.. for the love of god.

for some reason the 'twin-panel' one reminds me of the z600 tail lights which I think are fugly.

If I were to go the shaved route, I'd do something that somewhat hails back to the original design.. like this:

... but have the lights sunken into the body and perfectly vertical, then probably have a raised crescent rim thing happening around the outer edge. Just an idea.

By sdcvcc (68.101.197.93) on Thursday, November 18, 2004 - 12:18 am:

Here are 2 of 3 designs I have cooked up for my 75 after I either fill in the stock tail holes or make composite replacements.
I can use 4" or 2.5" LED's.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v391/sixdeep/75%20Hybrid%20Civic/twin-panel.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v391/sixdeep/75%20Hybrid%20Civic/twins-trim.jpg