Stories:Blue LEDs

Author: C3PO. At the time of this writing, it's even hard to remember back when blue LEDs were something new and "underground." But in the early 2000's, Vygis joined a hip customizing movement and endeavored to repopulate all of the light bulbs in the dashboard of his 1997 Honda with blue LED bulbs. Back then, these bulbs could only be bought from special websites run by guys who would buy the LEDs in bulk themselves and solder them to incandescent lamp bases. Over time and with a lot of help, Vygis transitioned his entire car to blue LEDs, supplementing it with some poorly color-matched electroluminescent panels where he could. A lot of the time that we spent at the Goddard Auto Club during these years was spent figuring out how to remove all of the bezels and buttons on his dashboard to make these bulb replacements. In some cases we had to disassemble switches that had built-in lights and solder in replacement bulbs ourselves. Vygis bought the brightest and most piercing bulbs he could find, which made it a painful experience to be a passenger in his car although it never seemed to bother him.
The car that I was driving at the time was a full decade older than Vygis', a ridiculously uncool silver 1986 Toyota Camry. As one of the many practical jokes that I cooked up over the years to play on Vygis, I secretly did a blue LED conversion on the Camry, and then waited. Finally the day arrived when there was some excuse for him to drive the car; I think that we even swapped cars for a trip for some reason. His reaction after driving the car was a typically hilarious "Well." I came to enjoy my own blue LED mod, particularly since I got more bulbs that were more diffuse, but sadly it wasn't long after I did the mod that I had to get rid of the car, selling it through he classified ads to some migrant who at the time didn't seem to realize that the lighting was a custom job.
Category:Interests:Blue LEDs
Category:Stories