Adding Pete's Light Kits to the Carrera Aston Martin Vantage

[RvE]

I was busy today installing my first ever light kit in my Carrera Aston Martin Vantage - the lighted car turned out great! I really like the new analog Carrera GT cars, but up until recently, these highly detailed cars did not have lights, so I took the plunge and picked up some light kits from Pete's Light Kits. I am very happy with the product and how they look in the car. Pete has a website with lots of instructions and sample photos that make it easy to install the light kits. A few things that I observed and felt were worth sharing are listed below:

1. The key to a good LED light installation is to power up the lights, at their operating voltage, for about 1 min. The lights will charge up and remain lit for several minutes, since the light wiring harness has a capacitor to store the charge. This allows you to try out different LED light positions to find the locations that you like best. I used hot glue to secure the LED lights inside the body light covers, and it worked well. You do "need 3 hands" to hold the chassis, lights and then apply the glue!!! Tip - I carefully held each LED light in place on the inside of the body using the tip of an Xacto knife and then dripped the hot glue onto the LED light in the body, and removed the knife once the glued LED lights had cooled in position. The photo below shows the LED lights installed behind the Carrera clear light lenses in the body.


2. The Carrera direction reversing switch keeps the voltage polarity the same at the motor, even when the car direction is changed. So the LED lights can be soldered directly to the motor terminals, like any other slot car that does not have the switch. I did measure the +ve and -ve voltages at the motor terminals and labelled them with a sharpie to make sure I got them right when installing the wiring. The photo below shows the LED light wiring harness soldered to the stock motor and chassis.


3. The Carrera chassis on this car has light posts to hold the factory lights - that will be coming on the newer Carrera models only. I tested the LED light appearance by temporarily installing the LED lights on the Carrera light posts, but the effect was not nearly as good as gluing the LED lights directly to the inside of the clear light covers. To make room for the wires and hot glue, I did have to snip out the factory light posts from the Carrera chassis. You can see these trimmed off light posts if you look carefully at the chassis in the photo above.


4. Once everything was all glued in place and tested, I did paint the hardened hot glue matt black on the underside of the body to reduce any bleeding of the light inside the wheel wells. I also taped some of the wires to the underside of the body. The 2-pin connectors on the wiring harness are very handy if one wants to remove the body from the chassis after the LED lights are all installed. As you can see from the front and rear photos, the LED lights are very realistic and have nice clear beams since the LEDs are placed directly onto the light lenses in the Carrera body.


Here is one last photo of the Carrera Aston Martin Vantage. These light kits worked great and really give the car a menacing look. Next up is my Carrera Porsche RSR 911 "Brumos livery. I hope this inspires others to add scale lights to their GT cars.


Thanks to Peter at Pete's Light Kits for these tips, and supplying the great kits. Cheers RvE

[TAMELESSTGR]

Awesome write up, may have to give this a go on many cars that do not have lights!

[PetesLightKits]

Thanks for the great write up Ralph.

[dw5555]

Very clean job. Looks good.
Dave

[dinglebery]

Very nice write up and great job! Pete's kits are great, I installed about 12 so far in my cars and trucks. I use them exclusively now.

Here's a tip: use black stick glue instead of clear - you can get it off Amazon and it really works better than painting the clear.

[RvE]

Thanks.....I will have to order some of the black glue sticks.....I just had the clear on hand.

[TuscoTodd]

That turned out SHARP!
Nice clean install!

[RvE]

Well I was back at my work bench and installed my my Light Kit from Pete's Light Kits in my Carrera Porsche 911 RSR.
I basically repeated the same installation process as the Carrera Aston Martin, as shown by the chassis and body photos below. In fact, the light lenses on this body are a bit larger, so its an easier installation than the AMR Vantage. One tip I forgot to mention in my original post is: Its helpful to snap out the front and rear axles during the Light Kit installation since it makes it easier to see if the Hot Glue beads are touching the body when its placed on the chassis. It just makes it easier to see the work area around front and rear light lenses on the body when the axles and wheels are out of the way.


The light kit really works well in these 911 RSR cars. The front beams are nice and bright, and the rear bulbs look very realistic in the back. Here are some photos of the completed slot car.


Here is a profile shot that shows both the front and rear lights. The light kits add a very nice scale touch to these cars that did not come with lights.


I am already looking around at my cars and trying to figure out which cars to upgrade next with Lights. Cheers RvE

[dinglebery]

Again, nice job there! Like you, I've got about 7 cars lined up to have lights installed - I have the kits in hand, just have to find the time! I'm curious which cars you're planning to put lights in, here's a couple of mine...
2 of the McLarens, 2 of the open cockpit Porsches, and the No.9 Martini. 2 more that aren't in the pic is another BRM Alfa and Warsteiner BMW

[RvE]

Hi Dingleberry - I might do some Fly cars next. I would be interested to see how you did your Open top Fly Porsches.
For me, the challenge on the Fly cars will be making a small hole behind the solid light lenses so the light can shine through. Cheers RvE

[dinglebery]

Here I think you can see how tight the space is in the front. I source my own SMD LEDs so that each car is different, or has the correct color output for the year the car is. I also always use black glue stick to cover up the LED. With the fronts here, I had to sand them down a little for tire clearance.
Cheers!

[Zcarfan]

Awesome write up on the installation. That's so clean I might have to try them out myself.

[RvE]

I recently purchased the Carrera Kremer K3 Porsche in the Vaillant livery. Its a great car and I really like this livery. Since this is not a recent Carrera release, it does not have the lights.....so I had to add Pete's Light Kits to this car too. Space around the light lenses was limited so I used 5 minute epoxy around the front edges of the LED lights instead of the typical dab of hot glue. It worked, but was a pretty finicky task since I had to hold the LED lights in place with a toothpick for 5 minutes for the glue to set. I also removed the front plastic lenses to provide extra room to glue the LED lights (you can see the removed lenses in the detail photo). The epoxy glue worked perfectly. Here are some chassis and LED wiring photos showing the installation .


Here are some exterior pics showing the working lights. These are nice and bright and visible, and look great from any angle.

As usual, these light kits add great scale realism to the Carrera slot cars.

[RvE]

In order to light up and test and install these light kits, you need some kind of DC power supply and its handy to also have a "test track" to ensure the lights are wired correctly and working properly when the car is in operation. I did not want to pull my variable DC power supply and after market controllers from my track and install them on my work bench, so I rigged up this powered track section from old surplus stock parts. By using the alligator clips correctly clipped to the track rails, I can get the correct DC voltage required to light up the LED lights for test fitting in the chassis/body. The test track allows me to easily test the cars and lights in "normal operation". The arrow on the tape shows the normal direction of travel for the car on this power base. You will need a voltmeter to measure the +ve and -ve track rails to figure out which is which, since the LED lights need to be connected with the correct DC polarities. I hope this simple set up inspires others to add scale light to their cars. Cheers RvE

[dinglebery]

You could also use a 9V battery.