New LED Dune Buggy Signal Lights Project

With all that has been happening here at the shop over the past few weeks I was not even sure I was going to find time to get this post out to all of you.  So with the few minutes that I have free while making parts for this project I put everything else aside that needed to be looked at around my house to let you know what has been happening. 

The big delay in getting any of this out on the blog has been having to put a new roof on my house along with correcting a good portion of the wiring that either did not work in the house or had no switches to turn things on and off where it was convenient. Plus now I've found out that a very large tree in my front yard needs to be cut down.  So finally here is the project. 

I had thought that I was done with all the projects that I wanted to do on my dune buggy until I found out that the rear signal lights in the little beast simple were not working or were barely working depending on how you look at it.  The front signal lights worked fine and this was the good news.  The bad news was that the rear signal lights barely worked on the driver's side and not at all on the passenger's side. On  top of this the running lights and brake lights were not as bright as I wanted them. So it was decided to replace all of the signal lights (front and rear) to LED light setups. 

Here are a couple of photos of the signal lights that were on the car when I bought it.  The front signal lights as I said were working fine and they looked OK so I was happy with them at that point.  The rear signal lights shown in the photo above are the ones that I have issues with. From what I can tell the rear lights are what are used in a trailer and the bulbs in them cannot be replaced.  They are a sealed beam setup.   This plus the fact that the rear portion of the body tips forward and makes the lights shine upward as well as out to the side of the car.  Not a good thing for dim lights in the first place. 

I started with the front lights as this was the simpler of the two sets to replace as I knew that they worked and it was just a matter of finding some nice LED lights that would look good to replace the old ones.  I tracked down the new lights that I thought would do the job only to find out that the original hole for the old lights were to small to fit the new lights.  So some design work needed to be done to create a housing for the new lights as I did not want to try and cut larger holes into the car body. 

This is what I came up with.  I designed the new LED light housings so that they would be inserted into the original holes that were already in the body and also use the existing smaller bolt holes for the housing that were already in the body as well.  The new 3D printed housings turned out very well as you can see and only needed to be smoothed and painted gloss black to be ready for mounting.  I also designed the housings so that the new LED lights would point directly forward for the best visibility while driving.

Here is the new LED light with the housing, rubber mount for the light, as well as a small foam rubber gasket that is mounted between the body of the dune buggy and the light housing.  This little gasket I made using my laser cutter.  The foam rubber I had found at my local Walmart store in the craft isle and it is exactly what I needed for this project. 

Here is what the new LED housing looks like just after I mounted it to the body using 6-32 bolts and lock nuts. Already a big improvement over the old lights. 

 The LED light at this point is held in place with a rubber mounting ring that is slid into the housing first.  This rubber mount locks itself in place and looks good as well.  The LED light and it's wiring were then fed through the housing to the underside of the fender where it was wired up to make it all work properly.   A simple task as the wiring is easy to get at. 

Here's how it all looks with the headlights on.

Again another look with the signal light flashing.  A much brighter setup than the original light that I had in the dune buggy.  So the project is half done at this point. 

To get an idea of what was needed for the rear tail lights I started simply by laying out a foam core box that fit up to the tail end of the dune buggy.  I know it looks crude at this point but it gave me the information that I needed to work out the design for the new rear LED tail lights. 

The foam core box layout gave me the dimensions of all the sides of the housing for the new LED lights.  Each side was a different shape and dimension and this was the simplest way to figure all of that out short of being able to 3D scan the rear end of the dune buggy.  Something that would have been nice to use but not in my budget to own.  

The new tail lights that will be installed into my dune buggy are for a 1965 Mustang.  I really like the looks of the lights and an LED insert was available which made the setup an easy choice for this project.  

After working with my brother who owns an auto body shop we tracked down the problem to the original tail lights. To put it simply the dune buggy had a bad ground or at the very least a poor ground.  To solve this issue I ran a test wire directly from the negative side of the battery to the new lights.  I tested this setup and turned on lights, stepped on brakes, and fired up signal lights and it all worked perfectly!  So that is the plan of action.  I will run a new ground wire to the tail end of the dune buggy to make everything work the way it should. 

To get the tail lights pointed in the right direction I have designed a new housing (shown above) for the lights that will be mounted to the body. A much smoother design from the foam core box to be sure. This was a trick in itself as the housing could not be mounted to the body with the light already installed into it. Or the light could not be installed into the housing already mounted to the dune buggy.  

To solve this problem I split up the assembly so that the tail lights could be mounted as shown in the image above. The Light Cowling is first attached to the Dune Buggy rear end using four small nuts and bolts.  Then the Light Bucket is attached to the front of the Cowling Face Plate.  The LED Assembly and Bezel are next and they are attached to the front of the Light Bucket.  Once this is done the Cowling Face Plate is attached to the Light Cowling using two small nuts and bolts on each side of Light Cowling.   

All that is needed after this has been accomplished is to hook up the wiring and I will have new LED tail lights on the rear of the dune buggy.  At that point I will be able to breath a sigh of relief knowing that I will be seen when I want to drive the dune buggy and make a turn or stop and not have the worry so much about having an accident because of poor lighting.

I have a bunch of 3D printing to get at for this project yet so I will close for now but will post more about my progress once I get a bit farther along with all that needs to be done.