schardein Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 I don't think I've posted this before... Made an interesting discovery a while back. Found an old Cadillac with "indicators" on the front fenders. I always thought they were just extra turn signal lights that the driver could see from the driver's seat. I figured I might be able to use them for something else, like on my CJ to indicate when the electric engine fans were on. I thought they used regular bulbs. Well, they don't. They aren't regular bulbs. They aren't LEDs either. They are fiber optics. The fiber optic physically runs to the low beam, high beam, and turn signal. They transfer the light so the driver can see that the lights are actually working. It's like a bulb check. I did some research and found this article: https://jalopnik.com/these-tattle-tales-are-americas-weirdest-secret-car-pa-1238802149 Just when you think you've seen/heard it all... anyway, I thought this was pretty cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete M Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 sweet! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schardein Posted July 20, 2020 Author Share Posted July 20, 2020 I'll tell ya... I cut the "wires", unbolted these and brought them home. Stripped a short piece of insulation off the end, and hooked them to a power supply. Nothing. How do you check the bulb? Hmm. Can't see a bulb. Man, that's some weird looking wire. What is that? I literally had no idea what was going on until I found that article, LOL. Then grabbed a flashlight and was like "Whoa!" Now I wish I'd stripped all the fiber optic cable out of it, instead of cutting it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
500 MJ Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 I never knew this was a thing. Thanks for sharing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
watchamakalit Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 I'm pretty sure Cadillac died this well into the 90's. I always thought it was a cool feature but never knew it was fiber optic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manche757 Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 Are those diodes which use tubes of different gases for different colors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silvertwinkiehobo Posted July 20, 2020 Share Posted July 20, 2020 No. 'fiber optics' is flexible plastic tubing lined with gaseous glass, then collapsed and drawn into a wire. When I was in high school, my grandpa always gave me a year's subscription to NatGeo magazine; this very subject was a favorite article I once had. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schardein Posted December 20, 2023 Author Share Posted December 20, 2023 I have an update to this fiber optic thing. I recently started messing around with a Jeep XJ Wagoneer front header. The kind with the quad headlights. Those headlights use specific connectors, that are different for the high beam and low beam headlights. Take a look at the pictures. 1st & 2nd pics- this is one of the headlight connectors. What is that extra hole for? 3rd pic- this is a fiber optic ashtray "light" from a Chevy square body. The light socket plugs into the instrument cluster housing. When the panel lights are on, light goes through the fiber optic, and the other end is clipped to the panel right above the ashtray. It illuminates the ashtray. 4th & 5th pic- the Chevy fiber optic cable plugs right into that hole in the Jeep headlight connector. The stickout length matches the length of the small tab on the front of the connector, which sets how far the connector can be pushed onto the headlight terminals. I have a short video of inserting the fiber optic, it seats with a satisfying "click". All of this is to say, I'm convinced the headlight connectors for the XJ quad headlights (H4701 high beam and H4703 low beam) are designed to accept fiber optic, possibly for use in "tattle tale" indicators similar to the Cadillac ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pizzaman09 Posted December 20, 2023 Share Posted December 20, 2023 This is pretty cool,I'd be interested to hear if you get it all to work out. BMW used fiber optics for their lighted door handles and the original headlight halos back in the early 2000s. I had always said that they must have let the interns loose on choosing lighting technology for their cars. The 2002 BMW M5 I used to own had, LED brake lights, xenon low beams, halogen high beams, fiberoptic headlight halos and everything else was incandescent. The only tech they were missing was Neon, which they used on the contemporary Z8 roadster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle_SX4 Posted December 21, 2023 Share Posted December 21, 2023 The first car I bought was a rusted out '84 Jaguar XJ6. It had some fiber optics lighting up the fan speed and temp dials in the dash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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