I found that there isn't enough watts in the JCWhitney scanner to see during the day, and trying to up the output for higher wattage lights is useless, sooo...listen up to this! There is a surprise at the end of this, don't skip down, if you have any will power!
At your local truck stop, you can find LED marker lights that "appear" to be replacement lights. Buy eight of these.
Go to your local Radio Shack, and purchase 16 10mfd can capacitors, a small project box with circuit board to fit, and I hope you have the rest of the stuff needed for a small project such as this, like a soldering iron and thin gauge rosin core solder.
Strip the bar down, and keep track of the wiring, and keep track of the polarity (LEDs only work one way) and replace the christmas lights with the LED marker lights. Some brands are depolarized or rectified so it does not matter, most are not, but you wont blow them up on a full reverse charge, they're protected. If you got the "pigtails" with it in a kit, the black wire is positive, white is common or ground. If you didn't get the pigtails, I found that a particular size of crimp on bullet style male connectors fit into the light terminals, but you will have to do some drilling, or make your own box as I did.
Notice that the center wire is the common wire on the flat cable, and also the positive wire for the lights. Remember this tidbit for later use below. Use whatever reassembly method you want, be creative, but be neat. I like black high temp RTV, its reliable and has no strong smell and can be used indoors.
Next, arrange the capacitors, and keep in mind that these little buggers are
also polarity sensitive, and that they WILL fit in a specific pattern in the box. your circuitry should make sure that they are wired in PARALLEL, or positive to positive, and all positives belong on the positive lead. Each LED light needs two of these to work properly. The negatives or "grounds" each go to a respective return control wire, one pair of capacitors to a wire. Enclose this setup into the box, altered as needed to provide clearance for the cables, and also, this part should be installed in or under the dash, out of the weather. Next, label the box clearly:
SCANNER TRAILING EFFECT CIRCUITRY ![Hey, it's Kitt! :kitt:](./images/smilies/kitt-smiley-front.gif)
or,
ALPHA CAPACITOR PACK
Have fun! This will bring your scanner new "light" with the old twist, and works directly with the JCWhiney box without blowing it up. I'm considering adding a switch to turn the "trailing effect" off, by using a DPDT switch and some rectifier diodes to the center wire to bypass charge to the capacitors, and freak KR buffs out when they see it do the LED thing, then see it trail and wonder what just happened.