#1968 thunderbird tail lights movie#
#1968 thunderbird tail lights manual#
#1968 thunderbird tail lights full#
#1968 thunderbird tail lights crack#

These lights feature a sequentially illuminating cascading effect as they turn on and off, which are sure to make you stand out from the crowd. 1967 - 1968 Firebird kit uses 128 high intensity wide angle LED’s which makes the lights brighter than the original lighting to match modern automobile intensity. Significantly improve your vehicle’s visibility, safety, and aesthetics.

#1968 thunderbird tail lights manual#

Miscellaneous Manual Transmission Componentsġ967 - 1968 Firebird Digital LED Tail Light Kit.Miscellaneous Automatic Transmission Components.Driven Racing Oil Lubricants and Additives.This could have been a secondary reason that was the nail in the coffin for the clear tail lights. I had heard that some States had issues with the clear lenses, as far as the lights being hard to see against the sun light, and the red no being to code. So, they stopped installing them, and simply used the less expensive red lenses from the 300 and Newport. Also, the red glass cups were another extra expense and had a metal attachment ring holding the glass cups on over the bulbs – held on my 3 screws (all hand installed). They small red reflectors had to be hand glued in place, and the chrome strips had to be hand applied.

#1968 thunderbird tail lights crack#

However, it seems that they had a high rejection rate for assembling the lenses, and that they had a tendency to crack (or cracks were more noticeable), and they were expensive to produce. I had narrowed the possible reasons down to a few, as to why Chrysler discontinued these clear lenses early in the model year. It seems that I have seen lenses/reflectors with only one bulb. There’s been an uptick in interesting designs in recent years though thanks to the LED revolution. By the ’90s taillights had become indistinguishable amorphous blobs. I think the late ’50s to late ’60s were the heyday of elegant taillamp designs – so many rocket-ship afterburner motifs, with chrome highlights and wonderfully three-dimensional, chrome-highlighted round, oval, and rectangular shapes (also, this is one area where Detroit walked all over the rest of the world stylistically). In the pre-LED era, these were something to behold. They used some sort of neon bulb setup so they light up as a perfectly evenly lit panel, without the bright spots and dim areas found in nearly all incandescently-lit taillamps. Nothing amazing about the shape – just a full-width rectangle – but photos don’t do them justice for how distinctive they look in real life when illuminated. The taillights on the 1997-98 Lincoln Mark VIII are interesting. I can’t believe there’s been only brief mention of the ’59 Cadillac – no taillamps are more iconic than those. Some of those kds grew up to design the first video games. As Dad drove through the neighborhood, tiny white-red quasars would flash on the rumps of parked cars, A kid would cast eyes forward of the approach to the next looming rhinoceros in the dark and anticipate where the two bright blips would appear–a game similar to leading one’s eyes ahead of the course of a firefly–and giggling when the guess was wrong.

#1968 thunderbird tail lights movie#

From there, the nighttime view through the windshield was like looking at a movie screen. Standing behind the front seat in the days before lap belts was a kid delight. Reflectors were integral, but their shapes within the lens were often a surprise.Īs ever, light and movement attract the childish eye. Older Curbivores like me also have deep memories of another aspect of tail light design that has been overwhelmed over decades by excited electrons: reflectors.īefore the early ’50s, tail lights were mostly small. It has fine associations with the two major comets that graced the night sky in the ”90s. Present tense, I like coming up behind a BMW with the Hale-Bopp look. Once you get beyond the distance where depth of field allows you to see in, the overall shape takes over.

#1968 thunderbird tail lights full#

They look like aquariums full of fish you can lose yourself in them, stopped behind a car at a traffic light. I’m a huge fan of the deep dimensionality in the last 15 years. There are the showpiece lights and the ones we gradually came to love or respect for remaining unchanged over a decade or more. We seem to have two approaches to this question.