Better backup lamps

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Recently the overhead light bulb in our swank in-town garage burned out, so it no longer comes on automatically when the door opens. This made backing in the resident 911SC challenging, given its dim incandescent reversing lamps and the fact that it needs to be threaded in past a BMW motorcycle on one side (with protruding horizontal cylinders) and a hanging bicycle on the other.

The solution? Upgrade the reversing lamps, obviously. 

I know what you’re thinking: A 911SC isn’t exactly an overlanding vehicle. What gives? To which I could simply give you:

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But seriously—the bits I’ll discuss here are relevant to a wide variety of more conventional OT&T-type models.

Most trucks and SUVs—even those designed for serious off-pavement travel—are equipped with backup lamps lit by incandescent bulbs invented when overlanding vehicles were still powered by oxen. Until recently, reversing after dark on a tough trail was a dicey proposition unless you mounted a decent halogen fog lamp hooked up to your reverse switch, as I did long ago on my FJ40.

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But doing so was pricey and time-consuming—and not really something you want to do on a vintage Porsche . . . 

Enter the miraculous Light Emitting Diode.

My friend Tim Hüber has been upgrading his own Carrera, and sent me a link to superbrightleds.com, specifically here, for the 1156 CAN Bus 26 SMD LED tower BA15S retrofit.

Uh . . . huh? you might ask. CAN stands for Controller Area Network. The CAN Bus, introduced in 1986 by Robert Bosch GmbH, is a system in modern vehicles that allows all their various ECUs (Electronic Control Units—sometimes 60 or more of them these days) to communicate with each other and notify the central computer if something goes wrong. In the early days of LED bulbs, simply replacing an incandescent bulb with an LED, which has a different (lower) power draw, would result in a fault code. Modern LEDs incorporate what is called a supervision circuit to eliminate this flaw. The BA15S is simply the code for the original specification (and widely used) incandescent bulb. The new tower incorporates 26 LEDs for a 360-degree output that is not only brighter than the original, but draws significantly less power. While alarmingly more expensive than an old-fashioned bulb, it will probably last the life of the vehicle.

Replacing the old bulbs in the Porsche took all of 10 minutes, with a break in the middle to photograph the stark difference between old and new:

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The improvement in rearward visibility is remarkable, and has allowed me to put off the odious task of getting out the stepladder and replacing that garage bulb.

An FJ40 in your investment portfolio?

You know the universe of classic four-wheel-drive vehicles has shifted when you watch a 1966 FJ40 Land Cruiser auctioned for $62,500 and think, Wow—bargain.

Twenty years ago such a concept would have been absurdly impossible. Even ten years ago, with California-origin nut-and-bolt restorations beginning to sell for several times what any new Land Cruiser ever did, no one thought of FJ40s as investments. Has that changed?

It’s difficult to say. Certainly there’s no doubt I could sell my FJ40—which is in excellent condition but hardly a concours piece—for six or seven times what I paid for it second hand in 1978 ($3,500 if you’re curious). And several recent over-$100,000 auction results for pristine and/or totally restored examples raised eyebrows among us long-time owners. No, actually those results triggered incredulous four-letter outbursts. But only time will tell if they were aberrations or indications. 

Tim Hüber and I saw the 1966 FJ40 in question at Gooding & Co. in Scottsdale this January. On a cursory inspection it appeared to have been sympathetically and authentically restored to original specs—with the jarring and unattractive exception of shiny fake-beadlock wheels, probably eight inches in width, which made the otherwise perfectly sized 33 x 9.50 BFG All-Terrains look weirdly puffed out. Grey steel factory 15s and hubcaps would have been inestimably superior. Still, wheels are easy to swap. 

And why “bargain?” The pre-sale estimate was $90,000 to $130,000—commensurate with those recent sales. However, to be fair, many other vehicles at the same auction failed to make their estimates. The 1973 Porsche 911T you see pictured here sold for $79,750 despite a pre-sale estimate of $90,000 to $110,000. So that in itself is not a sign that the FJ40 market has topped out.

Note the similar pre-sale estimates. Interestingly, 20 years ago you could pick up tatty but driveable early 70s 911T (the base model 911 at the time) for around $6,000, probably about the same as a really nice early 70s FJ40. The difference is, today even a tatty early 70s 911T is worth upwards of $20,000, while driveable FJ40s can still be had for $4,000 to $5,000. That why I’m not yet ready to bet whether the elevated market for pristine examples is a trend or a bump. There are a lot of 40s still being used for deer hunting and hauling cement.

It sure is fun to watch, though—and even if some of them remain garage queens for now, it’s nice to see FJ40s being preserved for the historical artifacts they are, as well as the superb working vehicles they can still be.