The Dark Wob

1965.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspect ... tion-4-4-1

No particular exemption for vehicles manufactured and first used outside of the UK in that section.


As for bright lights, look up COB LED's, a stack of chips all on one board and they usually light up uniform and bright and can be stacked to make a panel.

However, is the reflector still silver and the lens clean? That type of "one bulb makes big light" thing never works very well once the silver starts to turn grey. Fox-body Mustangs are a great example of that.

With a lot of drivers getting used to the laser light-show illumination on the back of cars (Only european models here seem to have the excessively bright brake lights, odd huh) I can see the urge for something brighter- in terms of turn signals, psh. Best thing I fitted to any of my older cars was a bright red LED bar third brake light in the top of the rear window. You'd have to run a wire from it back towards the brake switch for brakes-only but that's not too hard, and not worry about the indicators being red.
Clean lenses and good wires. Also make sure the flash rate isn't too slow because the modern Audi driver didn't have enough of an attention span for old American blink rates (long on, short off).

Believe it or not, there are some rather subtle differences between new and old 21/5 bulbs, particularly the 21W filament- they've modified the way they're made compared to the 60's through the 80's, in as far as they light up and go dim a lot faster than older bulbs. That's easier to see- I have older bulbs in mine there.

Phil

PhilA wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 3:45 pm 1965.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspect ... tion-4-4-1

No particular exemption for vehicles manufactured and first used outside of the UK in that section.

As for bright lights, look up COB LED's, a stack of chips all on one board and they usually light up uniform and bright and can be stacked to make a panel

Phil

Thanks Phil - even if there was an exemption for vehicles first used outside the UK it wouldn’t help as my AMC was sold here new.
The same rules as for any other car apply - i.e it can only have red rear flashers if pre-1965 (which it isn’t)

I will be ok if I ever get the Chevy back on the road though.

Funny, odd that they didn't upgrade the lights to the new standard then. Generally you'll be OK as it's borderline with age unless you get a proper jobsworth doing the test.

My recommendation is to pull the rear lamps apart and make sure the reflectors are bright and shiny (either by paint or polish) as that'll help the light output quite significantly.

If not, bright green LED's, shone through regular red plastic appear quite orange to the outside so you could give that a try- install a panel of bright green LED's in the upper or lower portion of the lens and leave the rest illuminated by the bulb.

PhilA wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 7:37 pm Funny, odd that they didn't upgrade the lights to the new standard then.

They did - there's additional wiring they must have fitted at the time and the 67 has some festoon fittings made by Hella fitted just underneath the bottom shuttline of the boot lid. These are made of unobtainium even if I wanted to return them to original, which I don't.

I am going to go with the red setup for now and see how we get on - ordered some red LED panels from the crew Cros mentioned upthread.

I don't actually need to worry about MOT as it's now exempt.