In a day and age when almost every new vehicle on the road has taillight lenses bigger than a basketball, there doesn't seem to be a lot of drivers who are real bright. Couple this with either a cell phone stuffed in their ear or eyes glued to a dash-mounted TV screen, and the odds of getting rear-ended are real good. For classic truck owners with smaller original equipment taillights, the chances are even greater. Even in brand-new condition, the effectiveness of a stock truck taillight fixture with a typical 1034 tungsten dual-element bulb is not all that great. Add years and years of UV exposure from the sun causing the lenses to fade and haze up and the taillight beam becomes almost invisible. Sure, you can adapt much larger taillights from another vehicle, such as a '65 Ford Mustang, to the rear of your truck, but nothing adds "old man smell" to a classic truck faster than a pair of big goofy taillights. The development of light emitting diodes (LEDs) in recent years has been a great boon to increasing the visibility of truck taillights, but additional problems arose, the least being poor aesthetics, but more importantly, possible legal annoyances. In a worst case scenario, a guy gets pulled over by the police for illegal (not DOT approved) taillights, and the cop doesn't stop writing the ticket until he's gone from one end of the truck to the other looking for violations.
Of course, the bottom line is no one wants some idiot plowing into the rear of their customized classic truck, so we thought we'd share what we believe is a great solution with our valued readers. Starting from the inside out, we installed a pair of Dakota Digital's latest offering, LED taillights for '60-66 Chevrolet Fleetside pickups. Our subject vehicle was Custom Classic Trucks' newest addition to our stable of project trucks, a '66 Chevy shortbed Fleetside. After being bought brand-new in Yucaipa, California, the '66 spent all its life frying on Southern California's high desert. Amazingly, the truck still has what's left of its original paint, but although intact, the original taillights were deeply hazed, with the light buckets packed full of desert silt.
First, we removed the taillight housing by unscrewing the two Phillips screws on the top and bottom of the taillight lens, and then removed it to expose the two Phillips screws attaching the taillight housing to the bed.
The first step of the Dakota Digital LED brake and taillight installation was to remove the stock lenses by removing the two CAD-plated Phillips head screws attaching it to the taillight fixture. For replacement parts such as the lenses, mounting screws, taillight bezels, and gaskets, we turned to the fine folks at Brothers Trucks in Corona, California. Often as not, the quality of aftermarket replacement parts can sometimes be a disappointment. To the contrary, the quality of parts we obtained from Dakota Digital and Brothers far exceeded our expectations. The Dakota Digital LED fixtures exhibited the precision of custom-made street rod components, while the Brothers' parts were flawless and faithful reproductions.
