Lighted Porthole Windows

[TbirdTim]

Well, last weekend I played around with another one of my ideas to make the Tbird even better (in my opinion). While I had my hardtop on the car, I studied the situation and made my plans for my next project to do to the car in a few months, when the hardtop goes back on for the Winter. I am planning to light the porthole windows from a very small white neon light strip that I had previously purchased for each window. I am planning to put the light at top of the glass and just between the gap between the glass and the black plastic trim around the window. I did a sample run-through and quick-wired it to see how it will look. I then closed down the garage door and turned out the lights in the garage, so that it was completely dark. I then turned on the lights of the Tbird and the portholes came to life! It looks beautiful to see them softly glowing with light at night, especially with the porthole wings! I'll probably have a couple of quick plug-in's, one for each light to make it easy to install the hardtop and plug in the lights. I didn't have time to do a proper installation, so I removed the lights for now, but I'll finish it sometime in the Winter.:biggrin:

[Gobird]

:thumbsup: Tim another good idea we can copy. I'll have to give this a try.

[rlstonejr]

very cool !!! :smokin:

[Lady 007]

Could you think of a way to put portholes in the soft top?

[02birdman]

I hear tell there is a new tbird in Hawaii that the owner airbrushed portholes on her soft top and it turned out just great.

[FordMan7]

Lighted Porthole windows - how cool!!!!:thumbsup:

I bet it would look extra sharp with "blue" neon!

I have got to try it!

Thanks for another neat idea TbirdTim!

FordMan7:fordsrule:

[taflocks]

with all respect to tim and marty i have found a much easier way to light the portholes a 2 light set
from target about 10 bucks that i wired to the parking light wire in the trunk the lights are made by
hikari and are called dash mood lights skew#4333412143 i removed the outter lens and then mounted them
with supplied sticky foot about 4 inches from the porthole they look great but not as natureal as martys
more of a whiter light very easy to install no plastic removal.

[taflocks]

this is a photo of the outside

[Coriaty]

OK all, what do you think these lights will look like when taped around the porthole? They do come in white and look interesting. They can be cut to size as well if you follow the instructions. It's some kind of flexible neon strip, 12v too.

Charles -

http://www.tweakmonster.com/products/lightstrip_page1.htm

[taflocks]

they may look good but there is no contact info and they don't come in white.
i thought about colors but i think it may look to much like a circus wagon with red blue yellow or ornge portholes.

[Gobird]

:biggrin: I just ordered two of these strips in blue from HighSpeed PC. When I get them and mess around with them to see what I can do I'll post pics after I get them in the Bird. Sounds interesting. :rolleyes:

Charles, Thanks for the info and the link.:pbj:

[Coriaty]

Spence,

I think the blue would look great with your car - or any really. I have found out that they do come in white as well and can be ordered that way. They also can be run on a battery pack with AA batteries for about 10 hours straight, eliminating the wiring.

I'm ordering a set as well in white...

Charles -

[taflocks]

how much???? sounds great i couldent find any info on price or where to order?

[A Justin]

Be careful about ordering blue or red lights to add to your car. They are illegal in some states as they are considered impersonating a cop. I dont know the full law... just beware :wink:

[TATDC]

Does any one know how much light these strips emit? Wondering if this light strip would make the ports look like a lighted circle, I want to highlight my emblems.

TATDC

[Gobird]

TATDC, At this time I have no idea on how much light it will put out. I'm hoping it will light up my emblems on the window. I'll post pics when I get them and get them installed. I hope they work out.

taflocks, as far as cost: It was $17.99 per window that I spent from the dealer that I listed. I'll see in a few weeks if it was worth it.:smokin:

[taflocks]

not really that bad.....the ones i have really light up the emblem but you can see the bulb if you are high enough.

[Gobird]

:pbj: Just got my two blue light strips from www.highspeedpc.com . Now it's time to play.:pink: :pink: :pink: I'll see what I can do with these.:naughty:

[TATDC]

Gobird what's taking so long I want to see?

[Gobird]

Won't get to it till this weekend.

[Gobird]

Well, I got the light strips installed yesterday. I have posted the steps I went through doing this. They aren't real bright but that might be a good thing. They were a bear to fit inside the plastic cover inside the car. You have to get them tight up against the glass on the flatest part on this plastic cover or they won't bend properley to fit.
Here is where I started. I got the hot and ground wires connected to the left tail light and went from there.

[Gobird]

I have added an inline switch so they can be turned off inside the trunk.

[Gobird]

I took the wires up through the wheel well and under the soft top bottom liner.

[Gobird]

I then ran the wires up to the hard top leaving extra wire so it will be easy to lift the top a few feet to unplug them when taking hard top off.

[Gobird]

Here is the inline switch I added to these.

[Gobird]

This is what they look like lit up inside the hard top.

[Gobird]

And here they are from the outside.

[Donnervogel]

As my teenager would say..."way cool"

[Quickdraw]

Gobird, what kind of porthole wings do you have - those aren't Jeff Pooles are they?

[Gobird]

No, I got those from someone when we were on the other site but can't remember who it was.:puzzled:

[DavidA]

It was me. I had mine done that way and posted the link to the print shop that did them. I'll try to find it and re-post it if anyone's interested in them.

That is terrific look, GoBird -- I wish they did those lights in red.:nuts: :smokin:

[TATDC]

FINALLY! Had the car wired for almost a month but could not find a light to do the job. Settled on license plate light. It is dome shaped, half chrome (back side) half white plastic cover (front half) and is about 1.5 inches wide. Wanted white light for the white bird. LED's are white but project like a flash light, otherwise bulbs have incandescent yellow/orange glow like headlights. Other light sources just don't throw enough light that I found. So here are a few pictures.

[TATDC]

Heres with a flash:

[TATDC]

They are actually brighter in person, limited by my camera.

Inside shots:

[TATDC]

Otherside

[DavidA]

These are all very neat ideas. PErsonally, if they made red neon, I'd probably go with GoBird's system. :nuts:

[02birdman]

Todd, how long did your installation take you and is that just a standard license plate light fixture. Does the light bother you while driving at night? I sure do like your idea, lookes real clean. Hey like the emblem too!
Jeff

[taflocks]

they do make a red neon and they also make red spots and red rope lights all from wal mart

[TATDC]

Jeff I thought you would like the emblem!! Now I can show them off at night too. NOW that I have done twice install is much quicker than that darn first one. Second to about 45 minutes. To do the wiring, now going through it, should take about an hour to get it hooked into the lighting sysytem. Then about 45 minutes per side. The first time WILL take longer, but if you were doing it again and again then time is drastically cut down after the first time. If you want more details on the entire project let me know. These lights do not bother people from the outside especially drivers. It does catch your attention because of the way it looks. I had concerns with that, so I did not use the LEDs. It is a standard lic. plate light at Autozone or PEP Boys. The project is easy just need to spend the time. Price is about $30 for everything. Oh, yeah another $30 for the emblems!! :poke:

DAVIDA, from what I can tell you need to make a decision. Highlight the window or highlight the emblems. Wiring is the same, just have to decide what look you want. There is another alternative for you since you want red. There are 8" round neon speaker rings. They just might highlight both the window and the emblems without bothering other drivers. I did not even try them since they do not come in white. But red they do have.

[Proboxfan]

Jeff, if you could make your porthole T-Bird emblems out of some kind of electro-luminescent material, you'd have an even bigger winner than you do now with your porthole emblems!

I know that they make electro-luminescent paints, and accordingly, they should make some kind of electro-luminescent adhesive/stickers. I've used the electro-luminescent paint on my compound bow sights and the three-dot sights on my Smith & Wesson Model 6906, and it really glows!

Just think of having some porthole stickers like the ones you make that would glow after being exposed to light? Especially without having to go through the effort of wiring up something to highlight them. I think that would be cool! :smokin:

If you did manage to come up with something like that, I'd tear off the emblems of yours I have on now and replace them, even as much as I love their look now!

[Thunderdogs]

I have been looking for light for the port hole for weeks and desided
that i wanted to shine a light into the port hole not to put lights
on the inside of the port home. i found some dash miniture spot light that might work however they are blue light not white. I also found
some map lights at j c whitney that would mount on the shelf and
shine on the port hole. you could move it back and forth till the light was the right size for the port hole. Has anyone tried this approach
jerry- houston tx

[TATDC]

J.P.,

I tried several different lights before going with what I did. If you have a light that has a beam directed at the window it will distract other cars that you pass. Could potentially cause an accident. I was playing with different LED set ups and tried deck mounting which shoots up toward higher cars than ours, most of the market by me. Also tried headliner mounting, which shoots toward the street and looks kind of stupid. Any fixture should have a lens cover to avoid this problem. Autozone was the only local store that had White light choices. And each Autozone had different stock to boot.

If you don't have a concentrated beam like you suggested then if set too far away the whole back deck is lit up like you left a dome light on. With everything else in this world I did not think that getting a light for this project would be so difficult. I looked into lights strips, light film, flexible lights strands, fiber optics, light bars...... I did see on a UK website lighted film "strips" that were already cut that said TOYOTA or something like that. When the film is electrified it glows. Do not know who make it or much about it. It's like Jeff's emblems during the day then glows when turned on.

Gary the electroluminescent paint what makes it glow? Is it an electric charge, how does it work? Don't you need light to keep charging this type of paint/product? I think what you said about the stickers is what I found, can't find the link right now.

[Proboxfan]

What I was getting at was that since they make electroluminescent paint, they ought to make some kind of sticker or tape that is electroluminescent too. It's the phosphor that makes it glow. It can also be done with alternating current applied to phosphorous material, but since alternating current is not readily available inside cars, light striking the material would have to be relied upon as the source for the glow. Unless someone wants to come up with a tritium emblem! :biggrin:

Yeah, it takes but a brief flash of light, any kind of light, to make it glow, but it will glow for close to an hour after light hits it. Even a passing flash of headlights would be enough to make it glow for a good while. Street lights and such would be a good enough light source to make a glow emanate from the electroluminescent material too. It would be far more subtle, and perhaps less distracting to passersby.

Someone brought up a point about not using red or blue lights, and beyond that, I would be hesitant to use any kind of light purely because of any potential legality. You know how it is supposedly illegal to travel with your interior/dome light on? Well, with my luck that would be stretched/interpreted to include any porthole light highlights that I installed, and a cop would hand me a ticket with a smirk on his face! :mad:

[TATDC]

Since the whole interior is not lit up like a dome light would do, I would like to believe that my P.H. set up would not be a problem. I'm sure there is a tape out there that can be cut to any shape then glows when electrically charged. I just don't know what it officially is called and where to look for it. The stuff I came across once had names and one logo, nothing we could use though. But I am set in what I did, no going back now!

Good luck on the tritium emblems!

[Proboxfan]

Check out this website! http://www.glo-net.com/glow/printing.html

I think I might try to contact them, and see what they think about developing a glow-in-the-dark Thunderbird porthole sticker emblem, and try to get an idea of the cost involved.

By the way, technically what they're dealing with here is a photoluminescent material. Photoluminescent and electroluminescent are usually both referred to as electroluminescent, but the true difference is that photoluminescent materials reemit light for varying lengths of time, at different intensities, while electroluminescent materials emit light when an alternating current is applied to them.

[Proboxfan]

I contacted Glo-Net, the company I referred to in the previous post regarding the glow-in-the-dark emblems, and they told me that only one side of their sticker sheets/material glows. And unfortunately, it's not the side with the adhesive.

I thought the glow would show through the adhesive, and the glowing emblem could be seen through the glass of the porthole window, but I guess that's not the case. They said that I could apply a clear glue to the glowing side, but that sounds like it's bound to turn into a real mess, and would probably look unsightly.

But, they do have durable epoxy glowing paints (which glow up to 12 hours after exposed to light), like I've used before, and someone could paint the T-Bird emblem onto the glass of their porthole window! It might be time consuming, but if you made a good outline of the emblem on the outside, or even inside, and filled it in with the glowing paint, it could really look special! :pbj: :mouth_wat

The only thing is, the minimum quantity of paint that you can buy is one liter, and the cost of that is $90! :sad:

[taflocks]

i always run into the same thing you try to do something cheap and it ends up costing more and nobody ever
likes the idea you have and you are stuck with 5 dozen porthole stickkers or 600 feet of 12 volt rope light.........

[02birdman]

Thomas your exaclty right. I can't tell you of the boxes of stuff I have in my basement with left over adventures I have went on trying to achieve that one thing I wanted for myself. I sure spent alot of time deciding on the design for the Porthole Emblem I sell, lots of exacto knives, sketches and research. I think the thing about my design is very simple, I seperated the wings which Ford has never done and it makes it look more elegant and certainly more delicate to install. I got the idea from seeing emblems on the Nieman Marcus Thunderbird and wondered why they looked more like a corporate afterthought and not the personal touch the car deserved. Nothing defines a Thunderbird more than the porthole, everyone lookes at it. You have to admit a porthole is the goofest thing you could possibly put on a car, but it caught everyones imagination in 1956 and our fasination with it is still going strong today. Lighting the porthole was talked about by TbirdTim way back in late 2001 on another forum many of us visited at the time and I have watched in amazement all the ideas of how to acheive it. I like Todd's idea because it acheives what you want from the outside and the light don't seem to be shining on anything other than the glass so it's not distracting for a driver. I think anything other than the opaque etched glass look might cheapen the simple elegance of the design.

[taflocks]

yours dose look great!! i also have so much crap and no room to store it, i have 25 paint bucket
holders from some up scale store in new hampshire [brookstone] i don't even like to paint.
i have a 6 ft soda fountain in the garage that i have never used.i also have a 45 ft great dane trailer full of stuff too.

[TATDC]

Taflocks load up that soda fountain and bring it to Vegas in March!! Empty out the trailer and it could be the TBN roaming party mobile

:tbn: :pbj: :beer: :smokin: :music: :cheers: :hippy: :friday: :tbn:

[TATDC]

02Birdman thanks!

Come to the Vegas meet a day early and let's do yours!! Can't let the Birdman maker going around not showing off at night.

[taflocks]

with the spot lights from auto zone all i had to do is put a piece of black heatshrink around the stem of the small spotlights so i get a small beam.my lights sit on the plastic behind the seat about 7 inches from the window....