LED Rear Lights

Mod Description

Bored of the original rear lights? Replace them with something new.

Mod Details

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A few people have asked me how good the quality of these were, as I hadn’t seen any, I couldn’t comment. Matt from Motoy was good enough to send me some to review.Unfortunately it seems that Motoy is no longer trading so you will have to go elsewhere.

Depo Auto Lights
Depo Auto Lamps

The Lights

Here they are, straight from the box. They come in black or silver to match your Tridion. Obviously these will not fit the cabrio.

Initial impressions were good, i’m glad they have used bulbs for the indicators, fog and reverse light. LED indicators flash too quickly so you need to add a load resistor. You won’t have troubles with these lights. Also LEDs rarely seem bright enough for the reverse or fog lights. Bulbs have a much wider lighting angle and can use a reflector to boost output.

The top section contains 25 LEDs which illuminate at half power with the main lights on. When the brake pedal is pushed, these LEDs illuminate at full power.

The brake lights are very bright and being LEDs, they react far quicker than standard bulbs.

Are They Legal?

Yes and no. When these lights were first released, you could only buy them for European smarts. (Fog light on the left and reverse light on the right). This old setup would fail an MOT as the fog light was on the wrong side. Matt at Motoy has managed to find UK specific lights with the reverse on the left and fog light on the right.

For a light to be road legal in the UK it must be ‘E marked’ which these are not. The reason for this is that getting a product E marked for UK use costs thousand of pounds, small companies aren’t going to shell out big bucks for such a small market like the UK.

However… these lights are SAE/ECE compliant which makes them legal in Europe. European laws and approval are just as strict as the UK E mark.

An MOT garage will NOT fail you with these lights attached.

Fitting The Lights

Remove the two plastic nuts using a 10mm socket.

Unhook them from the body by folding the unit to the side. Unclip the tab and pull the wiring connector out. These can be in tight. Try not to pull the wires, if you need help, grasp the connector with some pliers.

Plug the new lights into the original wiring connection. The plug will only go in one way so you can’t get it wrong.

On the leading edge you will find two hooks with foam washers around them. These slot into the two holes in the bodywork.

With the hooks in the holes, fold the unit over the threads and replace both plastic nuts. Forum member ‘Shadow’ makes a valid point about being careful not to over-tighten these nuts as they are only plastic, the coarse thread strips the nuts very easily.

As you can see, the paint match is perfect.

Here is one of the lights in place, notice how good the fit is.

The top section is the rear and brake lights.

The centre section is the indicator and reflector.

The lower section is either the fog or reverse light.

Here they both are in-situ.

Conclusion

For a low cost after market part, the fit and finish is superb. The overall design is one you will either love or hate. The colour match is spot on. These units create more light than the standard smart rear lights.

The faster reacting brake lights will warn approaching motorists far quicker giving them more of a chance to apply their brakes as opposed to slamming in the back of you.

LEDs are good at grabbing attention which is good if the person behind you is paying more attention to their make-up or the text message they are sending.

Issues With The Design

The only down point I noticed with these was the way in which the insert was held into the housing. Unfortunately they are quite fragile so the tabs break. Not a major issue though as they can be easily fixed. Just hold the insert in place and glue it to the cover with polyurethane bonding adhesive (Tigerseal etc).