Saturday, June 16, 2012

Let There Be Light!

As I've been getting the TR6 back to the kind of condition I hope to get her to, I've been re-doing the trunk.

In earlier posts, you can see the set of trunk panels I've made for the car as well as the effect they have had on the trunk. It definitely looks better.
However, the trunk is really dark. Really DARK! And if I have a flat or other issue out on the road, I'm going to have a real problem on my hands trying to see what I'm doing. To that end, I decided to upgrade the lights in the trunk.

The original setup was a little plastic plinth with connectors jammed on it and a bulb stuck between the connectors. The bulb always popped out easily, the connectors made poor contact, and you'd get more light in your trunk smearing the tail of a lightning bug on your hand.

LED technology has improved significantly in the past few years. You can now get a nice set of bright LED's for very little money. They don't really look the part though on a vintage car, so I decided to figure out a way to install them and not have them stand out terribly.

The bracing inside the trunk has some nice edges to it, so I found that I could install the lights on the inside edge of one of the braces and it would look pretty doggone good. The lighting is good, and they don't look terrible when you don't need them.


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