I'm thinking of some cheap little subtle mods I can do to fill my weekends over the coming months, and with all the exitment about Angel Eyes. I decided I'd do some research on the matter.

One route I'm looking at is using elwire for the process, my thoughts on this are:

Pro's:

- Cheap (less than $20 for the best stuff)
- Easy to use, easy to apply. easy to curve round the lights, easy to wire in ($8 gets you a car inverter).
- Safe, they won't break - ever. They will 'run out' but from my reading it's 10,000 hours, which is a good amount of time (450 days if they're on 24hours a day).
- Nice selection of colors (blue, pink, orange, lime, yellow, white, red, purple, green, aqua)

Con's:
- Not as bright
...can't think of any others.

Now the brightness thing could be an issue, but it's not like you use them for seeing anything all I want is a subtle ring when I have my parking lights on. But I guess I can always order the stuff and see once it's here.

Anyway, anyone got any experience with it, or thoughts.

Here's a pix of the stuff I'm going to order... http://store1.yimg.com/I/light-up-clothing_1849_440245

 

yea i want to get some of that and outline my sub with it

 

it will work but probably look rather cheesy
try to find white EL wire

even my Ebay Halo's are not that bright
and 2 have failed so

 

"it will work but probably look rather cheesy "

In what way?

 

My experience with one EL wire was that it is not very bright, especially if you were to use it outside the car where it will be brighter, (or not as dark at night.)

Also, the EL wire I got ran off DC 12V, so no inverter was needed.

 

i dont think you are gonna be able to see them if there are any other lights. so unless you will be driving around at night with only your parking lights on, i dont think they are worth putting in there.
el wire is fun for interior stuff, or outlining things. i have el pedals and i cant tell if they are on until i park in the garage or at night. they have a little power invertor/transformer thingy.

 

http://www.elbestbuy.com/liwicule.html

I'm going to suck it and see, I mean $10 and then at least I can see in person how bright they are.

"i dont think you are gonna be able to see them if there are any other lights. so unless you will be driving around at night with only your parking lights on, i dont think they are worth putting in there."

I can barely see the BMW ones when they have their headlights on.

I'll get them and see how they look, worse case they can be a subtle accent during the early evening hours.

I'll post when they arrive.

 

OK, that place has a minimum order of 25" I still might go for it, I'm sure I can always find a way to use up 25" of el wire.

http://www.newtiburon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2422

(direct link to the final look: http://www.frayadjacent.com/pics/tib.../angeleyes.jpg)

The above is (I believe from my reading today) done with the dimmer el wire, the link above is for stuff that is much brighter - I'm thinking that that doesn't look half bad.

Now my qunadry - what color. I've read that the blue is the brightest - but very illegal, aqua is second and you could get away with it. But I've just ordered Luminics Yellow JDm bulbs, so I'm thinking white or maybe yellow.... I'll sleep on it.

Tomorrow I do my 18 LED 3rd brake light conversion. With the TH3's I just got in the mail - w00t!

 

Angel eyes are sort of dumb if they're not around projectors.

 

get white

 

Be careful with EL wire in the sunlight. If the wire is exposed to the sun for extended periods of time it will cause illumination gaps which look black in the el wire making it look tacky. I suggest not putting them on the dash or any other area exposed to direct sunlight. This is what happened to me in my old car.

 

I was going to use el Wire for an interior application. I didn't like the color I ordered though in the end. I ended up using it on my daughter's messenger bag which looked cool. I still have some left, it's aqua. The darker blue looks cooler IMO.

Check out thatscoolwire.com. He does small quantities. I ordered just 1' of each color for less than $15.00 if you are comfortable soldering the connections yourself. I made a sampling of all the colors connected together for my own reference. It's a good reference since I can turn it on and grab a color and lay it up on fabric to see how it will turn out.

A lot of the PT Cruiser guys here in my area use el Wire in their interiors. Looks fresh when it responds to the sound reactive inverter. As far as using it outside (in the headlights etc.) I don't think it would be bright enough and I echo the statement about the black spots, though it's never happened to me, I read about it online.

Anyway, thatscoolwire.com Alan is the guru over there and he's answered alot of my questions about how to hook it up etc.

 

It'll be hard to make it look like a smooth circle. Where are you planning on mounting the wire? Inside the headlamp housings? what type of adhesive will hold it? Can it take the heat from the halogens?

IIRC, all EL wire and EL tape use an inverter because it is the alternating current that makes it glow.

Forgive me for using the P word, but I saw some add-on LED halo rings at Pep-Boys...

 

Correct, the ones I have used have about a 1 inch cube at the end of the wire, the EL runs off AC.