Finally picked up my V... a few quick lighting mods

My V landed at the Long Beach port earlier this week, and was just delivered to the dealership this morning. Went over and picked it up this afternoon, then had to go to out with some friends, but then came back and spent a couple of hours on it doing a few quick mods. It's a V with no ATP (one of the very few in So Cal, since this was pretty much a special order.... thanks Dianne!).


The mods I first did were....

- Phillips Silver Vision 7440 signal bulbs (temporary until my LED's come in)
- Installed CF-18 LED flasher relay (works fine with the Silver Vision bulbs)
- Raybrig 194 super white bulbs for the DRL/parking lights
- Nokya H11 2500K yellow bulbs for the foglights (temporary until my LED's come in)
- 5-way SMD LED white license plate bulbs
- Rewired the front side marker bulbs (from my other post here) - I'll take some better video of it
- Factory Toyota wheel locks are on (thanks Dianne!)
- Shark fin antenna was ordered over a week ago - should arrive soon
- Getting the windows tinted first thing Monday morning


I'll take better pictures during the day, but it looks like any other black V. I need to get my dslr back from my friend, but here are some pics I just snapped tonight with an older camera to show how certain bulbs looked with the factory LED headlights. Not sure if I'll do the interior with LED lights, since I don't like the look of them lit up inside a car.

A few other things that I'm planning on doing are JDM signal mirrors (ordered), front & rear emblem mod (getting rid of the blue shadow), maybe getting spare badges & emblems and painting them gloss black, Tanabe lowering springs (ordered), and putting on 15mm spacers all around. I want to keep the car looking stock for the most part, but more aggressive and clean looking. I also have a ScanGuageII on order so I can configure a few things to my liking.



Starting out....




Using the 5-way SMD LED 194 bulbs in the parking lights. They look too blue and don't match the LED headlights (these are the "super white" bulbs)




Using the Raybrig super white 194 bulbs. They're not as bright as the LED bulbs, but the color matches perfectly with the LED headlights.




A couple of quick pics of the front end with the temporary Nokya yellow bulbs in the foglights. I re-wired the front side marker light so that it only lights up with the turn signals. I tried to capture video but it didn't come out good. Will take better vid of it later and post it up. But it looks better now with no orange lights lit up.






Only parking lights / DRLs on with the Raybrig bulbs. No front side markers lit up.




I put the 5-way SMD LED wedge bulbs (the same ones from above) in the rear license plate lights. They look good back there and shine white, no blue color at all.




A couple of pics with the Phillips Silver Vision turn signal bulbs. These are temporary until my 27-way SMD amber LEDs come in. Since I already had the CF-18 LED flasher relay, I went ahead and put that in. It doesn't effect the regular bulbs at all.

 

I had the Raybrig bulbs laying around for years. IIRC, I got them about 10 years ago and they have just sitting around been in a bag with other automotive bulbs I've accumulated over time. I had a couple of different PIAA super white 194 bulbs also, but those actually looked more blue than the LED.

Here's a pic of the Raybrig bulb packet. Not sure if they still sell or make these anymore.

 

The Japanese cars use studs on the hub, so longer studs will need to be pressed into the hub. Not that hard to do if you have the right tools, but you need to take everything apart to do it. You don't find any spacers with built-in studs until you go 25mm or bigger.

On European cars, they all use bolts so putting spacers on is extremely easy since all you need are longer bolts. I've always used H&R spacers and have never had any problems with them. I'll trust H&R and pay the price for them over some no-name billet aluminum spacer that may cause problems down the road (balancing issues, stress cracks, etc).

 

Just got my shark fin antenna today. I'm going to get another flat antenna and solder that in there so there's 2 big antennas under the shark fin cover. Then hopefully that'll improve my radio signal to the shark fin, since the small one in there looks pretty weak as is.

 

Unscrew the stock antenna off. Use the supplied bolt and connect the wire from the antenna underneath the sharkfin. Clean the roof, align the sharkfin, and then stick it on with the supplied double-sided tape. Takes a couple of minutes to do, most of the time spent aligning it up.

I posted in another thread that reception in the LA area has not changed for me with any of the 6 stations that I listen to on a daily basis. If anything, I did notice a slight difference when I didn't have any antenna on the car (just leaving it unscrewed) as you could hear more static on certain stations, but overall the sharkfin works great and the look is what counts.