LED Side marker lights

[Brett Dikeman]

>  > If anyone is interested, I threw together a few
>>  pictures of my new LED side marker light install.
>>  Please keep your chuckling to yourselves as I've payed
>>  no attention to aesthetics.
>>
>>  These things are wired to the city lights of my
>>  euro-lights and do not blink.
>>
>>  Just looking for some extra visibility on the road.
>>
>  > http://www.geocities.com/pickandpray/ledmarker
>>
>>
>  > Chi

>Cute.
>Now people will relive "Close Encounters of the third Kind" when they spot
>you in their rear view mirror at night.

Not quite- look again at the photos for where it's placed.  It's 
actually not visible head-on at all.  We're also not talking unusual 
colors here- they're orange.

Every water cooled 911 and Boxster has a similar light; right in the 
front edge of the wheel well, about trim level.  It's in exactly the 
same spot, and sends out light in nearly the same way; back and to 
the side.

The whole idea is to 'remind' people of where the front corner of the 
car is on a dark highway, before they change lanes into you; if 
they're in the right position, they don't see the taillight and they 
don't see the headlight, and their headlights are far enough forward 
that they don't hit the reflector.  If you've got a black car, and 
euro lights(which have only reflectors, not glowing markers), well, 
the front end of the car sorta disappears.  It should not be too 
bright- which Chi might need to fix, although it's tough to tell from 
a photo.

I never got past my rough prototype(which used a single LED with a 
home-brew attempt at fiber optics), but it had a nice glow to it that 
was subtle, and it was very small and hid nicely under the plastic 
chrome trim, even better than Chi's setup.  In the daytime, all you 
could see if you looked very closely was a piece of plexiglass...and 
you had to look pretty closely.

Brett
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