About time you got a build thread happening mate

What a great read!! Epic attention to detail, very tasteful mods too. Awesome work dude

man those headlights look insane
gota have a look at doing that now cheers
the ghia is coming along nicely mate keep up the work

Love your interior lighting. Really would like to install the footwell lamps in my car.

Pure white lighting can't be beaten IMO.

Thanks. I'm a bit of a perfectionist sometimes.
I'm very inconsistent with my mods, and I never tend to bother taking progress photos, so it always deterred me from starting a build thread.
Saving it all up for one shot is a good way to make it look epic... haha

Thanks.
I'll be keeping this car for quite some time yet, so there's plenty of time for more mods.
If you're really keen on doing the headlights, I'd suggest checking out http://www.hidplanet.com for more info than you can poke a stick at regarding HID retrofitting. That's pretty much where I learned everything.

Thanks, I want to add a couple more white LEDs to throw some light on the front seats, they're quite dark compared to the rest.
Does your car have provision for bulb holders? It wouldn't take much to splice into some existing wiring. The light for the cig lighter is one you could tap in to, or the auto shifter indicator bulb.

Yeah I love it. Looks super classy.
Do you know how hard it is to find real white LEDs? I bought so many only to find they all looked quite blue. Until I came across some high quality Nichia LEDs for sale on a US forum. The person selling them had 3 different colour bins of them and he took photos of them all against a white wall and I picked the one I lied best of the 3.
Due to the way our eyes work they still occasionally look bluish when next to a yellowish light source. (FYI for anyone that didnt know, white LEDs are actually blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor coating to filter out the blue.)
I want to fit a couple under the bonnet as accent lighting/work lights, and few in the boot too.

nice work man

Some really nice mods

Do u mind putting a pic of the cluster up in the day

was it custom made or did u buy it if so were and how much it looks awsome

I'll try to remember to get a good shot tomorrow.
In the mean time, I just found this on my phone. It shows the design a bit, but it's blurry. Probably shouldn't take photos while driving...
40,000km anniversary since I bought it...


It's a custom design I did myself, using design elements from many different clusters. The font I borrowed from someone else's design here on fordmods.
I printed it at home on kodak high gloss photo paper.
I still have the image on my computer. I could print some off and mail you a set.

Probably need to be given a K rating - sounds like most white LED's are around 6000K, where they should be around 4500k for white light.

LEDs don't really have a K rating. They use coordinates on a chromactiy chart instead.
The data sheet for the ones I bought (Nichia NSPWR70CSS-K1 bin 'b4p8') has 4 sets of x,y coordinates that draw a 4 sided shape on the chromacity chart and inside that shape is what you can expect the colour to be.

The K ratings we are used to seeing specify points along a line in the chromacity chart known as the Planck curve. You can sort of refer LED colour to it, but they tend to deviate either side of the line.
http://www.perfectlum.com/manual/Perfec ... formation1

oh nice

i printed of the pic of the cluster u uploaded but would take ages for me to get it to scale it was way to big when i printed it.

If you have the file that is at scale that would be great

Thanks

I will try to upload one with scaling info in it later tonight.
What photo editing software will you be printing with?

Just went out and checked. EB's have a provision for the globe. SCHWEEEET! I guess fairmonts and fairlanes had them.

I dont have any software atm but i can get one if u recommend any

Check your PM's

Update on wheels...
I bought some high build spray putty to smooth out the rough cast aluminium that I exposed by stripping all the paint off the wheel.(wont be doing that for the next 3)
This photo is while it was drying hence the shine.


I dont have photos of me sanding them, not much to show really, but there was a lot of orange-peel, for lack of a better description, after the first coat that needed to be removed. After that was finished I sprayed them again, and sanded them down one more time before spraying the final colour.

The colour of choice is M7 Mercury Silver. I didnt want to go too dark, but I wanted something that would stand out.


I still need to finish off the lip, and see if I prefer a brushed or polished finish, but I'm really liking the colour.
Cant wait to have them finished and see them on the car.