oldb

I picked up a nice 07 gt500 a year and a half ago with only 6,000 miles. I am enjoying this car very much with the exception of the Cervini LED tail light conversion installed by the pervious owner.
They are so dim as taillights that you have to look closely in the daylight to see if they are on. They are better in turn or four way mode, but no where near as bright as the commercial LED lights I use at work.
A You Tube search brought up a another Shelby owner who was disappointed with his Cervini conversion as well for the same reason.
I sent an e mail to Cervini asking for suggestions, I received a polite reply that there are no replacement parts, and that as the second owner I was on my own. Not unusual these days I guess.
To my question. Have any of you done this conversion and feel the tail lights are not bright enough?
Not sure if Cervini uses a resister to reduce the voltage for the tail function or if they are just poor quality LED's with low lumens.
I may look into putting some better LED's in the housings or just replacing the whole works with something else.


Thanks,


B

2cokeman

I can tell you the LED's on our cars are a PITA, They they illuminated even when the car is off due to the constant power to the rear harness, They need a resister to block the power when the car is off, the perv owner probably has too big a resister installed??

NJGT

Are the LED's you have regular bulb base style units that plug into stock type sockets? If so, try Syvania Silverstar LED replacements. I've used them and they're fairly bright / easily seen.

Nickz33

Frenchusa

i have same car 07 GT500, i modify my tail light to Raxiom Gen5, omg just love it!!

https://www.americanmuscle.com/raxio...ghts-0509.html

Nickz33, this post is 2 years old :-), not sure you will get reply soon :-)

08'MustangDude

I have Phillips LEDs in my tails, they're not on when the car is off.
My rear side-markers and center brake stay on, pretty visible at night
for about eight minutes, or whatever the RAP time length is. After that,
they are OFF off. IF I pop the trunk to wake the car up, the center tail,
and side markers will come on again, very dim. Then again I re-arm
the car, then after that time period, they go off. I also have the same bulbs,
amber, in the front side-markers, and the signals.

As far as brightness, you only need to see the brake and signal during
the day. Why would you want your parking lights on in broad daylight,
to even have to go right up on them to see them? They're probably fine at
night...

All a resister will do, is turn that power into heat. A BIG resister doesn't
mean anything, that usually means a 55watt -vs- a 35watt which it will
work better for keeping the LEDs from illuminating. The problem, is, people
put them in SERIES with the + wire, severely reducing power to the LED.
They go in PARALLEL:


Wiring it in SERIES makes it current limiting, not a load.

This will DIM the LED, but also protect it. When LEDs heat up, they want more current, which is what
pops them. Using a current limiting resister keeps the current flow at a fixed rate, and it can't pull more.
It results in a dimmer LED, only if you don't match it with the right resister.

08'MustangDude

Oh, and electricity always takes the least resistant path, so in some cases,
the load resister won't stop the dim illumination. No, the reason for the resister
is to satisfy the current load reading for the ECU, and it shuts power down to the
rear, BECAUSE, if you were remove the resister right after shutting the car off,
and the LEDs are out? Power is not restored to the harness when you pull
the resister off the circuit.

The dimming is an ERROR/BULB OUT check, and an LEDs fail these checks.
The reason the power is continually sent back there, is because the LED keeps
failing the load test, so it keeps testing the circuit by keeping current there till
it sees the correct load, then power is turned off once satisfied.

Try it:
Put a load resister on, shut the car off, then immediately take the resister off.
The LED will not turn back on, unless the car hasn't gone to sleep.

Try it:
Shut the car off, and see the lights are dim. Short a resister across the + and ground,
they turn off, remove the short, they stay off.

All it does is tell the SBJ the lights are good, stop testing them...
It's called COLD DIAGNOSTICS..