United Pacific LED Lights

LED lights first became popular, on used and semi trailers and semi trucks because these things get exposed to a lot of vibration, a lot of different climate conditions where bulbs were just constantly burning out. So, when I first noticed LED lights, it was a on a semi trailer of all things and then as time went by then companies like Cadillac, started making their tail lights and fancy strings of LED lights. And nowadays they've become, second nature to almost every new car on the market. But what's great is the companies that were actually producing company- LEDs for those early semi trucks, are now making them for classic cars. And what I really love is the United Pacific line and even though they were big into semi lights, they've also fully embraced the classic car market.

And what they've done is they've introduced complete lines of LED. They've got over 7000 classic car parts in their inventory, including, what we're gonna do today is work on this great Chevy C10 pickup, and we're gonna be actually putting some powerful LED headlights into this thing and better run 1600 lumens on high beam which is insanely bright, and there's gonna be a nice white light too. And we're also gonna put in a set of sequential tail light, LED taillights and they have a factory mirror, a factory resembling mirror that has sort of in disguise, little arrows that give good turn signal indication out on the side. So, this is just some of the parts they offer for the C10. They have 800 parts, that just for 1960-87 Chevrolet C10 pickups.

So, if these aren't the parts you wanna install, go check it out. They have great side lights, backup lights, turn signal lights. As well as some sheet metal parts and vent windows and a whole litany of parts for, just this great little ride. With that, I'm gonna introduce Garrett Carlson here. Garrett is, the owner of this great truck, and he's probably, we're gonna be doing these upgrades and you can probably share a little bit about the truck and some of its history.

Yeah, well this is a 1969 CST-10. It was originally a 396 air conditioning, power steering, power brake truck, short box. Which was kind of unique, they didn't make penny with the big block Chevrolet's in it. I've done a bunch of upgrades to it, I've put on the whole Hotchkis suspension on it, from front to rear. Put a fuel cell in the back and actually upgraded the motor to a 462 big block.

And it's a fun truck. I love it. And I've had it for a long time. So it's got a lot of memories. Awesome.

Well, let's get started. We're gonna start with actually putting the headlights in this truck. I'm dying to see what these look like. Yes, I am too. I'm getting excited to see the product in the truck and actually have some decent headlights when I'm driving down the road.

Awesome. Let's get going. Now do I install the headlights on the C10s, there's a beauty ring that's around the headlight. And you have to take that beauty ring off. There's four screws on that.

And so you pull out all four of them screws. And now, there's two on this, on the east side and there's one at the very top. I like to do is leave the top one in last so the headlight doesn't fall down and bend the brackets and I got the beauty ring out, I had the little half moons in there which we won't be installing back in it down. Now that the headlight is out, we are ready to install the new headlight. And it just plugs right in, they got the same type of brackets, the same type of plug that goes on the stock one here.

We'll get that in there. Now there's little tabs that are on the side that actually center it in the right position. We can kind of turn that, turn the headlight and you'll feel it kind of fall into them brackets. What we'll do is we'll get the top screw in there, first to kind of hold everything in position. And then go back around and make sure that all the screws are tight and ready to install the beauty ring.

And there it is. It's all installed. Now to replace the rear tail lights here and blinkers, what you have to do is there's just two screws, two screws here, you don't, do not need to replace the or disassemble the beauty ring. What you just pull out the two screws that are here, and you can kind of pull that, the red one out and just disassemble the other LED. This is the current LED light that I had, it's a kind of replacement for the 1157 bulbs.

And they're not very bright in the back. Pacific also supplies a bracket, new bracket to put in there. We won't be using the new bracket today, mine are actually in pretty decent shape. But I will be using the new, the gasket that comes with it. And it's just a matter of pulling that out and setting that one in.

You can see this one here has been a little used. So we'll put the new one in there. And now, on these the tail lights here and brake lights, they have a little DIP switch on here. Now you can flip that DIP switch in the center, it just lights up all of the LEDs when you put your blinker on. And now if you slide it off to the right, it would be to the left side, if it's on the left side of the truck, you'd move the blinker as you're looking at it to the right, which would be to this side.

And when you put that in, now that will make the blinkers. I have corrected. Now if you flip it to the, let's try it now. If you flip it to the right, you might have to play with it. Try the blinkers now, there you go.

So that would be that, it kind of goes to sequential over. Now if you keep that DIP switch in the center, it just flashes all of them at one time. It's whatever your preference is. I'm gonna flip it over to the rights, to the side there. So they actually blink like that.

And then it's just a matter of reinstalling the blinker in there and adding, and putting the two screws back in. Now that this one is installed, we can go to the other side and we can complete the back. Now when installing LED tail lights, you have to install a different type of flasher because it doesn't have enough resistance with the bulbs to operate the flashers. So you have to install an electronic one. And United Pacific offers one here, which is a great product.

And it's a matter of just installing out where your old flasher is and you have to, if you notice here, it's, they also have a reverse polarity plug, that's on it. This vehicle here, you need to have that installed. So you just install that onto the flasher. And then you can install this where your old flasher was. Now we checked the flashes and we found out that this is the one, the bottom one here is actually the one for the blinkers.

So we just need to pull that one out. Install the new one in here. And I already found that I already had a screw in here for a ground, we can get that in there and then just tighten that up. United Pacific also has mirrors that actually have blinkers on, which are kind of nice to have, especially if there's a car in your blind spot or in front of your vehicle. And they can actually see them if you're trying to move over.

Motorcycle riders really like these. Now to install these, we have to pull off the old mirror, they do come with a bracket if you don't have a mirror on your side right now and you're gonna go with this style, you have to install this bracket also. Now when installing this, one thing that's kind of important is you gotta make sure that this window is all the way up in the vehicle otherwise you won't be able to get access over to the mirror. So once you get that all the way up, then you can just pull off your handles and that, cause if they make a special tool for this it just also slips off. And just get them off, and there one I clip.

Very important on this that you don't get it around the window channel, wanna make sure that so when you roll your window down, it's not gonna hook out wires. So you gotta make sure it's on the outside of that when you come in to drill the hole. Now I drilled a hole through the door here, and on the C10s, there's another chamber in here, which you have to drill through that also. And then I stuck a stiff wire through here and tied it on to get it out through the doorframe or through the edge of the door. And now we'll have the same thing to drill through the cab, and you'll see right where your dome light is I'm gonna go right above that, and then try to come out the same hole, down here where the actual dome light dome light switches on the side.

What I did is I went and got a couple of little rubber grommets here, that go in the door and a little bit of fuel line. It's just a little rubber piece here, that will flex and it won't damage the wires. So we'll just get that in there and put the grommets around the thing so it doesn't shot out. Now on this here, the wire, the one that has the white stripes on it is the power wire, the other one is the ground. So I'm gonna put this up to the ground up here, that I have here for my flasher.

And now the other wire, all we need to do is to tie that to the blinker wire, and you can get to that right here on the steering column, what we're gonna use here, is we're gonna use the cell these to add a trailer harness. Next you work really nice because you can put it around the wire, and then put your wire in there and just slip it down and it'll make a good connection. What I'm gonna do, is you see the blue, this blue wire it comes, this is for the steering column. So if you ever have to take your steering column out, you don't wanna put it on that side there. So there's two blue wires here.

So I wanna go down here on one of these here. So then if you pull your steering wheel, steering column out, you're not gonna have to disconnect this wire. Well, that completes our installation of the United Pacific tail lights and the headlights which were pretty much plug and play. And of course we kind of anticipated that the mirror was gonna give us a little trouble cause we're putting the wired mirror in where there wasn't one before. Yep.

Yeah the mirror we have to drill a hole through the door and then you gotta kind of fish it through the door into the cab of the truck. And it can be a little tough, but with a little patience you can get it through there. We had to go and fabricate a little bit of holes and some grommets and stuff just so the wire doesn't get damaged in that when it's going through there, but it turned out really nice and it's a nice product. I know, what I really love about these mirrors they just look bone stock. Yep.

Until you actually turn the signal on and then the arrows show up and it's like wow, that is cool. It is just kind of hidden away, so when you're at the car show nobody knows the difference but when you're on the road, you get that added safety feature. And that's nice for other people and for also for my vehicle, for safety of that, if my blinker comes on, I'm starting to move over and I can't see the vehicle, it, hopefully they'll give me a tutor, Let you know that they're there. Let me know that they're there. That's cool.

Yeah, what I like about all the United Pacific products was they were all built well, there was head lights, it's a good looking unit but it also, it's not skimpy that thing's got some weight to it and - Yeah, it's nice I'm getting excited to drive it at night to see how my headlights actually work at nighttime. Yeah, that'd be great. And that and what I like is united Pacific they've got a reputation already in good lighting but they continue to build on quality aftermarket products for a classic car industry. They've got like 32 Ford Roadster bodies, they've got roads, they got 34 Ford pickup bodies, and now lately, they've introduced early generation Bronco bodies. So, not only are they doing lighting and a lot of the parks for the C10, they've also got a complete line of parts, that will, make the lives easier for a lot of enthusiasts.

Yes. No, I'm happy with the product. I just can't wait to get it back on the road, Get out and trade, go have fun again. And go have some fun again, yep. Yep.