rodH

I know this is totally personal opinion and when I purchased my car almost a year ago I was totally sold on getting the rear LEDs for my car. As time has gone on I have started to notice that some of the LEDs have a darker area around the perimeter of the light housing but I'm not sure that I like because it doesn't really match with my car. I preferred the lights look and blend into the vehicle as much as possible and since my car is GR The stock lights actually do a pretty good job of blending with the color.


as I do more research it looks like there are at least two or three variations of the LED lights and if I did it I would go with the version that does not have the darker surround. But the more I continue to research some more I wonder if they look a little bit out of place and maybe a little bit on the cheap side given the style of the LEDs that they use. Maybe if there was an OLED style light that we see so much these days, but now I'm starting to wonder which route to go.

This is my car with the stock lights and below you will see several other red ones with different lights that I pulled from the Internet.

Thoughts?

Dennis C

OE solid red tail lights are the way to go!

myw

nothing beats oem parts + styling imo ... but if i had to choose out of the various aftermarket LEDs the dectanes look the best.

Austin997.2

My personal preference is stock on the lights.

rodH

na. I don't want solid red on a red car

I feel the same way about blacked out lights on a black car

gotgolf52

Dectane would look great on your car.

Dennis C

Understood. Get what you like!

lowbee

Until another aftermarket manufacturer come up with a better looking one, I say OEM looks best.

JuanK20

I have dectane LED on mine. But looking at these pictures, i think OEM looks better on a red car.

Dennis C

Maybe you'd like smoked lenses or clear lenses as opposed to red. It might add more contrast to the rear of the vehicle.

BIG smoke

Now, the LED-tailed Sneetches-
Had tails with LED's.
The Plain-tailed Sneetches-Had none upon thars.

Those LED's weren’t so big. They were really so small.
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.

Dennis C

Spoken like a true star bellied Sneetch.

BIG smoke

I'm a son of a star bellied sneetch.

rodH

Not after more contrast (tinted, smoked, or clear) or less contrast (solid red), the OEM color is perfect for my taste, but the one version appears to be very similar in color to the OEM (are those the dectanes on the car in my original thread with the wing?), while the other one has a darker color and a much darker surround, which is what I do NOT want.

Now I just need to think about if the Dectanes LED pattern and look is what I want. There are some other versions out there now as well, with a more OLED perimeter look, but those are so new that I haven't seen any of these on real cars here. I guess i'll be patient and see what those look like as well.

In the mean time my aerokit/GT3 front bumper is at the painter. Was also thinking some mild graphics (side decals and maybe sometype of hood/rood stripe, but I don't want to replicate the 911R too much. Actually, I do want a similar look, but just don't want it to be a wannabe car. When I started thinking about this project, a couple of the first mods I was thinking was my 911S rear badge, PORSCHE rear badge and a GT3 front grill. A few months later we started getting pics of the 911R.) Also has crossed my mind to do 997.2 rear wing, which I have always been against wings (esp the turbo wings) on 911 cars because I love the rear shape so much, but for some reason the 997.2 GT3 and RS wings seem to work, because the pedistal design brings the wing up off of the rear deck and fender, which allows the rear end to show its original design cues.

Petza914

That's a tough one on a red car. If the color isn't exact, it looks odd and if it is exact, it's a lot of solid red back there. I think in your case I'd go clear or lightly tinted to create some contrast.

Avoid the Spyder brand taillights for the 997. I went through 2 sets of these on my wife's car and 4 sets on mine before switching over to Dectanes. No issues with either set of those.

Unfortunately, Dectane no longer makes the plain smoked ones without the red tint, or the clear ones, which they called Crystal. You might be able to find one of those or the other at Amazon's German site or at Orange Tuning. With your red car, maybe the ones they call smoke/red would actually look good, and I think those are still in production.

I think the OEM lights look very dated myself, like the 996. Since 997.2s actually received led lights from the factory that look very similar to the Dectanes, I don't think they look cheap or out of place on a 997.1, though the newer style leds that look like a solid when illuminated, do look better.

Here are the smoked Dectanes on mine and the regular on my wife's pink car. I like the smoked, because they're not blacked out where you fantastic see into them, just tinted to provide a more unified lens appearance.