Finishing up the back up light project, here are a few more photos.
The finished installation late in the afternoon:
This was taken with an aperture controlled long exposure:
At night, illuminated with nothing but the parking lights and license plate light:
And this is what the lamps offer:
They seem ridiculously bright, but are just normal 1156 bulbs. It must be the design of the reflectors and glass lenses that adds to the effectiveness.
At first I wired them up to a switch on the dash, with a yellow indicator light so I would remember they were on. Many decades ago I used this arrangement on a different car and found it to be a convenient if not so polite way to instruct tailgaters to “back up”. Being suddenly blinded there really was no choice but to get off my bumper. I also found it dangerous and stupid.
Being somewhat older and wiser that wasn’t my intent this time. It was just easy to hook up. I soon discovered the indicator wasn’t visible enough and I routinely forgot to turn them off. So I stopped using them until I could connect a transmission operated switch.
And typical of hot rod stuff, even that wasn’t easy. The Hurst universal bracket positioned the switch completely beyond the reverse lever. Once the bracket was shortened and redrilled, everything lined up and worked fine.
One last footnote. The outboard bulbs in this photo were original to the lamps. Being 6 volts they are pretty much useless, but are probably the coolest looking automotive bulbs I’ve ever seen:
More to follow.