tenspeed

I did this three months ago and I just got around to uploading pictures from my camera. I noticed that the A7 trunk had incandescent bulbs and I like LEDs so I made some.

I pulled the housing, took some measurements and found some 5050 LED festoon bulbs that would fit. Removed the caps and cut the legs off.




Taped them and soldered them together. Removed the tape, slid them in and tied into the bulb holder.



The difference...




The purple haze comes from my RGB driveway flood light. Here's a shot of it and the boss checking out my gutter install.

Worldwidebeagle

WHOA - who cares about leds - The gutters are amazing!!! Love the copper gutter hangers. You did the gutters yourself? Did you have to take out a second mortgage? We are getting a new roof in a month and seeing your post has me thinking .....

tenspeed

Thank you, my wife likes them too. She insisted on them. I was going to use hangers that were less elaborate and space them further apart. Since we weren't paying for installation, we went with more of the good stuff. I'm glad she has expensive tastes (at times).

Yes. I spent my life being a skilled tradesman and I know that water runs down hill. The installation was all basic math and hand tool skills. I did spend a fair amount of time standing around and doing mental engineering. I only had one chance to get it right and I only had one "do over" with the hanger spacing.

Thankfully, no. The cost of the materials wasn't much more than cost of ordinary K style gutters installed.

We were in dire need of a new roof. Ours was 40 years old and couldn't take much more. As part of the roof planning, new gutters, metal wrapped fascias and increased water drainage made sense. I discovered garage foundation damage when digging the drainage ditch and also discovered a rotting soffit when replacing some bad fascia boards. I called in some pro's to get the work done before the metal roof people were scheduled to start.

I only installed copper in the front. My house is built into a hillside overlooking a Finger Lake so the only people seeing the rear are out on a boat a few hundred yards away. It took a bit of effort to estimate and source the materials at the lowest price. We used Slate & Copper Sales of Erie Penn. Nice folks on the phone and made good on everything they said. Price came in around $40 per foot for the materials.

The bottom line is that the tidy roof and copper gutters make us smile every time we pull into the driveway. The sting of the higher cost has already gone away.

fstkmaro

Good job with the gutters, I wish my house would match something like that :-) Good job with the LEDs as well. I will check superbrightleds.com to try and find a set.

Question, do you think that replacing the licencse plate lamps and the front signal lamps with LEDs will trigger an error message with these cars?

tenspeed

Thank you. I got the LEDs from ebay. Search using "5050 festoon"

My A7 Prestige has LED plate lights so you could install OEM units with no message. The front signal lamps most likely would trigger a error message if switched. On ordinary cars, turn signal LEDs are installed with load resistors to prevent hyper flash.

I got error messages when trying LEDs in the front and rear marker lights. I bought some generic "error free" bulbs and still see the message. I returned to the incandescents since it's not that important to have LEDs in that location.

OldSchool24

Great job on the LEDs. Looks much better.