Screaming Chicken 1970-73 Camaro Tail Lights, Field-Tested

Caecey Killian September 23, 2026 6 min read 0

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1970-73 Camaro tail lights come in more flavors than most builders expect. LED bulbs, full LED panels, sequential lighting, stock-look upgrades. Kevin over at Screaming Chicken put every option for 1970-73 Camaro tail lights on a table side by side and ran them against each other, and we watched the whole thing so we could break down what actually matters for your build.

We have covered their approach before in our piece on Screaming Chicken’s Camaro and Firebird LED lighting kits, but this video gets more specific. It puts real bulbs next to real bulbs and real panels next to real panels, on the same bench, under the same lights, so you can see the difference instead of just reading a spec sheet.

Panel Kits Versus Bulb Upgrades For 1970-73 Camaro Tail Lights

The first decision you need to make with 1970-73 Camaro tail lights is whether you want a full panel swap or a bulb upgrade behind your factory lens. A single bulb, even an LED one, only lights up the section of the lens directly in front of it. You get a bright center and dark edges, which is exactly why the panel option exists.

The 1970-73 Camaro LED Tail Light Set from United Pacific replaces the lens entirely with a panel that lights the whole area, including the inner sections that never lit up red before on the factory setup. It plugs straight into your factory connector, no wiring involved, which is why Kevin called it their most popular option. If your buckets are still in good shape, you can run this panel alone and skip the rest of the kit. For a full teardown, the 1970-73 Camaro Complete LED Tail Lights kit throws in the buckets, hardware, and gaskets so you are not chasing three different orders to finish one job.

The other panel route for 1970-73 Camaro tail lights is Digi-Tails, sold here as the 1970-73 Camaro Digi-Tails LED Tail Light Panels, or with reverse built in as the Digi-Tails Panels w/LED Reverse. These take more work. You are modifying the bucket and running wiring, not just dropping a lens in. What you get for that extra labor is a sequential option. Hit your turn signal and the segments light up in order across the lens instead of all at once. United Pacific does not do that. If you want the deep to deep to deep chase pattern down the lens, Digi-Tails is the only way to get it on this platform.

Bulb Tiers If You Want Stock-Look 1970-73 Camaro Tail Lights

Not every build wants the panel look. United Pacific lenses have a different texture than factory glass, and if you are keeping things period-correct, you may want to stick with a stock lens and just upgrade what is behind it.

Screaming Chicken sells three bulb tiers through the 1970-73 Camaro LED Tail Light Bulb Combo Kit, and the video ran all three against each other and against a stock incandescent bulb for comparison. Auxito is the entry point and the cheapest of the three, and even at that price it showed a real jump over the stock bulb, especially in the reverse lights where you get a clean white beam instead of the yellow tint incandescent bulbs throw. Dapper sits in the middle, and the video showed it pulling ahead of the Auxito on the brake light transition, which matters more than raw brightness because the point of a brake light is the change someone sees behind you, not just how bright it sits at idle. Diode Dynamics HP11 bulbs sit at the top of the lineup and came out the brightest of the three across the board, though Kevin noted some lenses will show a slight washout with them since a very bright bulb can bleed a little white through thinner red plastic even while staying red overall.

None of these differences were night and day once the bulbs were actually mounted in the car instead of sitting on a bench a couple of feet apart. If you run Diode Dynamics on one side and Auxito on the other by mistake, nobody walking past your Camaro is going to call you out on it. But if you are chasing every bit of visibility for night driving or track days, the Diode Dynamics option earns its higher price.

Wiring And Hardware Behind Every 1970-73 Camaro Tail Lights Build

Every one of these upgrades depends on parts that never make the highlight reel. If you run LED bulbs anywhere on your flasher circuit, you need the 1967-81 Camaro/Firebird LED Flasher relay, because LEDs do not draw enough resistance to trigger a stock flasher correctly. Skip this part, and you get hyper flash- that rapid stutter you have probably seen on someone else’s car and wondered what was wrong with it.

For reverse lights specifically, the 1970-1981 Camaro/Firebird LED Reverse Light Bulbs give you that clean white throw the video kept coming back to, and they matter more than people expect once you are backing a trailer into a dark driveway.

Hardware is where your build year actually changes your parts list for 1970-73 Camaro tail lights. Cars through early 1972 typically have studs that are already threaded, which is your 1970-72 Camaro Tail Light to Body Hardware. Some 1972 and all 1973 cars need the self-tapping style instead, covered by the 1972-73 Camaro Tail Light to Body Hardware. Check your own car before ordering, because guessing wrong here means a return shipment and a delayed install.

If your buckets are rusted or cracked, the 1970-73 Camaro Tail Light Housings are factory reproductions that take your existing connectors without modification. And regardless of which lighting path you pick, replace your 1970-73 Camaro Tail Lamp Gaskets while everything is apart. These gaskets are over fifty years old on an unrestored car, and a fresh set is cheap insurance against water getting into a lens you just paid real money to upgrade.

We have written before about how Screaming Chicken built its reputation solving real F-body problems instead of chasing hype parts, and this lineup of 1970-73 Camaro tail lights is that philosophy in practice. Whether you want the full sequential Digi-Tails setup, a United Pacific panel that plugs and plays, or a simple bulb swap that keeps your factory look intact, there is a real option here instead of one product pushed as the only answer.

If you are still deciding on 1970-73 Camaro tail lights, start with what your buckets look like right now. Good buckets mean you can run a panel alone and save money. Rough buckets mean you are buying the complete kit either way, so you might as well pick the lighting style you actually want while you are in there.

AboutCaecey Killian

Caecey Killian covers builds, installs, and product features for Car Junkie Magazine. He has spent years on the floor of the garage chasing horsepower across SBC, LS, and modern muscle platforms, and that shop time runs through every article he writes. His current CJM project is Project Street Reaper, a 1976 Camaro built around a fresh SBC 350. He is also known for Project Mighty Mouse, a 1977 Chevy Nova running a 1962 small-journal 327 SBC, with build coverage published across multiple online automotive magazines. His media background spans long-form build documentation, install coverage, and product features across the magazine and the Car Junkie Magazine YouTube channel. He writes the way he wrenches: specific, honest about the mistakes, and grounded in real garage work.

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