Some of my vintage car owning friends are still living in the dark ages...literally.

It’s as though having free road tax and MOT exemption makes them exempt from anything else such as proper lights and indicators. There’s one friend who I refuse to follow on some of our evening runs through Sussex lanes as suddenly on a tiny unlit country road an arm appears through the window gesticulating wildly... are we stooping, turning, has he found a pub or is his bladder just weakening.

No wonder he never takes his car to France - goodness knows what they’d think of him there as I suspect he would still think it within his rights to gesticulate wildly even though following drivers may put his actions down to a hyperactive (or more likely, scared, passenger).

I like to take the Alvis to France once or twice a year and even though I have upgraded the lights to Lucas ST38 “Pork Pie” lamps with stop, tail and indicator I felt the time had come to try out LEDs as they are supposed to be brighter and consume less current.

There are quite a few Alvis Register members who are sporting the EU type lights which are frequently used on trailers and lorries so there was plenty of advice available.

My Alvis is a slightly delicate little soul so I thought I would try converting the Pork Pies to full LED spec rather than using the EU spec lights, for the time being.

I had seen the advert for Classic Dynamo & Regulator Conversions in The Automobile and noticed they also did LED conversions so when I went to the Beaulieu Autojumble in September 2013 I took the plunge and bought two Pork Pie conversion kits, a relay for the indicators and two LEDs to operate the front side lights/indicators.

Before doing this you do need to know:

1. Is the car negative or positive earth and indeed what voltage it is - Peter of “Classic Dynamo & Regulator” offers all these options.
2. If your car already has an indicator switch and relay - how many pins does the relay have?
3. Ideally I think your indicator switch should also make a noise or have a flashing light.

The kit of parts ready to fit to the Alvis

 

Out with the Old...

...and in with the New...

The lightboard with its legs on, ready to replace the old lighting circuit.

Below, the lightboard temporarily mounted in the “Pork Pie” waiting to be checked for the height of the separator. 

Trimming to size...

...and they work!...but my camera (actually probably me) is not good enough to capture the indicators working. But they do, and so do the brake lights and so far I haven’t seen the ammeter move from 0.

Lastly, I don’t like the idea of drilling holes in a dashboard which has managed to avoid being messed about with for 86 years so I made up a little pod which bolts onto the steering column to hold the water temperature gauge, fan switch and indicator switch so that a new owner could take all these off...if they’re misguided enough!

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