What did you do to your Mark VIII today?

:cool:

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pieced my neon tail light back together after young blonde chippie backed into my parked car at lowes hardware and destroyed the neon lamp fixture. put a roll of 5050 LEDs striplights in it for some kind of parking/brake lights and glued it all together again. nice to have the wiring diagram. sylvania lighting disavows any knowledge about the ballast, as usual; won't even come clean on how to test it.
on the plus side, there was no damage to the trunk lid or hinges and she missed the lock assembly completely.
I was standing in the register line and watched her nail my car, get out and look at it, jump back into her F150 pickup and haul ass out of the lot. and lowes lot camera was not looking that far out into the lot. the PD laughed a lot when I mansplained it to them. TANJ. screwit.
next on the list, decided not to install the seventy five shot of nitrous on the car. twenty one year old engine is running smoothly and starts on the first turn of the key and is not burning too much oil, so why abuse it. I hate the idea of cracking open a good running engine that doesn't leak coolant/oil to do a valve job. I know it would run better, but ok running is good enough at 145K miles and 21 years. better is the enemy of good for the measure of many things in life. later
 
capt fast said:
pieced my neon tail light back together after young blonde chippie backed into my parked car at lowes hardware and destroyed the neon lamp fixture. put a roll of 5050 LEDs striplights in it for some kind of parking/brake lights and glued it all together again. nice to have the wiring diagram. sylvania lighting disavows any knowledge about the ballast, as usual; won't even come clean on how to test it.
on the plus side, there was no damage to the trunk lid or hinges and she missed the lock assembly completely.
I was standing in the register line and watched her nail my car, get out and look at it, jump back into her F150 pickup and haul ass out of the lot. and lowes lot camera was not looking that far out into the lot. the PD laughed a lot when I mansplained it to them. TANJ. screwit.
next on the list, decided not to install the seventy five shot of nitrous on the car. twenty one year old engine is running smoothly and starts on the first turn of the key and is not burning too much oil, so why abuse it. I hate the idea of cracking open a good running engine that doesn't leak coolant/oil to do a valve job. I know it would run better, but ok running is good enough at 145K miles and 21 years. better is the enemy of good for the measure of many things in life. later
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Do have a written explanation on how you wired up the LEDs?

Thanks
 
ok, the connector on the trunk lid attached to the neon has three wires. one is a ground going back to the lighting module, one is a parallel circuit with the high mounted brake light, and the third one is parallel with the parking lights on the side mounted tail lights. use a meter as harness color is not something I trust year to year. the neon ballast has a ring connector ground at the QD connector for a seperate ground for the lamp groundplain. the ring connector screws into the trunk lid. do not use it for a lighting ground. use the one in the car harness as it is sensed in the module. I cut the QD from the car harness and used push connectors on the led harness. I have other uses for the three pin ford connector. solder all the wiring you do inside the sealed light assy. heat shrink insulation tube is your friend here.
I used a four meter roll of 12vdc LED tape with 5050 led and clear plastic covering with adhesive on the reverse side of the tape. it is ready to use, no extra dropping resistors needed as it is all on the flexible tape. two strips across the reflector for the parking lights and two strips across the reflector for the brake lights. how ever many you want and how ever bright you desire for brake lights, just use more strips. I used two strips wired in parallel for brake lights and two strips wired in parallel for the parking lights. common ground them for the 0 volts wire but electrically isolate the 12vdc inputs between the two sets of strips. the polarity of the feeds to the strips is printed on the strips. pay close attention to polarity as these are diodes and only pass current in one direction only. end feed with available end connectors. I bought all my chinesium stuff online. the stuff I used has a led every 15mm along the strip. I pinned them to the chrome reflector surface with a bit of hot glue.
the lamp assembly is a sealed unit because of the voltages the neon requires. using only the 13.8vdc does not require a sealed lamp assy. cutting it open is necessary. all the perimeter around the weld for the red lense and inside the lock opening of the light assembly is necessary. I used a thin rotary saw dremel cutter. your choice. also, I put drain holes in the bottom lip of the housing when I reassembled it. I used RTV adhesive to close up the cuts because it doesn't get brittle when it gets cold like hot glue does.
at any rate, because of the lense damage, I only did this mod as a proof of concept and now I am looking for another unit to do a better job of it. as in now i know where not to cut.
 
I went about the rear tail light in a far more complicated way but its not a bad outcome. Just finished it up today. I originally was going to install sequential 1157 bulbs in the trunk light but read about how the electrical draw on the lighting board shorts out the system so I opted to just use the Ballast wires to run most of the 6 RED LED bulbs. The 2 center sockets are just small spade markers, then the middle 1157's are lit just as OEM and the end 1157's light in tandem with the OEM signal bulbs. I was going to put the entire procedure in the How To section but seem to have lost the SD card with all the mod pictures! Its around here some where.... Any way, I put a chrome molding over the LED emitters so its not throwing an eye piercing red beam into folks eyes. The brilliant red LEDs give off a nice red color in the housing. The camera doesn't do it justice at all. The end OEMs are a bit orange in comparison. I also pictured how to repair the broken studs on the back of the housing since that's a major issue with these brittle housings. Gotta find that SD card! Then my driver door handle craped out on me today! Ha, one thing after another....
LBhYFOSl.jpg

eXUQh3Ll.jpg

Just the markers lit
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UPDATE.... I found the SD card. I'll write up a How To Article on how I put 1157's in the light housing. Also how to fix the broken off housing screw studs.
 
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slowmkviii said:
There insurance should tow it back for you shouldn't they.
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Liability coverage pays money for property damage to another car and the p.damage to other car's tow bill, not for his own. He needed collision coverage, liablity will not pay for damage to his own or tow bill. Bill boats x claims adjuster
 
BILLBOATS said:
Liability coverage pays money for property damage to another car and the p.damage to other car's tow bill, not for his own. He needed collision coverage, liablity will not pay for damage to his own or tow bill. Bill boats x claims adjuster
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There liability , negligence, yes, His negligence, no coverage, no paying tow or chis car. He need collision coverage for this to be paid. Likely it would have been a total loss under collision coverage and no towing paid back to carry n.c. He had no coll coverage, liability only. bill boats retired claims adjuster
 
I assumed he was not a fault
It sounded like he was rear ended
So liability vs collision for him wouldn't matter
 
Well I have tried to install a new passenger HID light but of course there are no instructions so the new bulb is just taking up space on the dining room table. Headlight Experts refuses to respond to emails so I guess a phone call is in order.
 
You are exactly right. I lay old towels down wash the whole underneath with brake cleaner after the fact. I used a whole can just on the k-member/frame, the the side of the block and under where the oil filter is. What a mess.
 
My very first oil change was part of figuring out the best way to put in a relocation kit. Now, I don't even have to jack the car up! So easy a 5 year old can do it. And I can pre fill the filter and not spill a drop. Its in the "How Too" section. Very happy with it.
 
xtriggerman said:
I went about the rear tail light in a far more complicated way but its not a bad outcome. Just finished it up today. I originally was going to install sequential 1157 bulbs in the trunk light but read about how the electrical draw on the lighting board shorts out the system so I opted to just use the Ballast wires to run most of the 6 RED LED bulbs. The 2 center sockets are just small spade markers, then the middle 1157's are lit just as OEM and the end 1157's light in tandem with the OEM signal bulbs. I was going to put the entire procedure in the How To section but seem to have lost the SD card with all the mod pictures! Its around here some where.... Any way, I put a chrome molding over the LED emitters so its not throwing an eye piercing red beam into folks eyes. The brilliant red LEDs give off a nice red color in the housing. The camera doesn't do it justice at all. The end OEMs are a bit orange in comparison. I also pictured how to repair the broken studs on the back of the housing since that's a major issue with these brittle housings. Gotta find that SD card! Then my driver door handle craped out on me today! Ha, one thing after another....
View attachment 828572181
View attachment 828572182
Just the markers lit
View attachment 828572183

UPDATE.... I found the SD card. I'll write up a How To Article on how I put 1157's in the light housing. Also how to fix the broken off housing screw studs.
Click to expand...
Got ride of the molding and put these over the yellow markers...... not bad!
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I walked out to the garage and opened the big tool box and got out the biggest sledge hammer I have and held it in front of my Mark VIII and told her to behave until springtime or else. bitch went all snake eyed on me and puked P/S fluid on the floor. O-rings on a swivel fitting failed. Not her fault. all good now.
 
I got my junk running for the first time in 3 years.
Tomorrow tech inspection in order to make it road legal again.
And then just drive it.
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