Taco Time Port Orchard WA | LED Sign Retrofit by Plumb Signs
Taco Time — Port Orchard, WA · LED Channel-Letter Retrofit
When the Taco Time NW franchisee at 1599 SE Lund Ave finished the building remodel, the original fluorescent channel-letter sets were finally pulled off the wall. Plumb Signs rebuilt the two wall-mounted letter sets, retrofitted them with UL-listed LED modules, and re-hung them on a façade ready for another twenty-five years of Puget Sound weather.
Start a Sign Project →A Remodel That Earned Its Sign Program Back
Taco Time NW Port Orchard sits one block off SR-160 on SE Lund Avenue — a high-traffic corridor of commuters heading to and from the Southworth ferry. The franchisee's building remodel was the right moment to retire two aging fluorescent channel-letter sets that had earned every bit of their wear from years of Kitsap rain, salt air, and summer UV.
Plumb Signs took both sets off the wall, rebuilt the cabinets where coastal moisture had reached the welds, retrofitted the interiors with UL-listed LED module strings on Class 2 drivers, and reinstalled them on the freshly finished façade. The retrofit cuts the building's signage power draw substantially, eliminates the ballast-and-tube maintenance the old fluorescent system needed every couple of years, and gives the restaurant the even, daylight-white face brightness that channel letters were never able to deliver in their fluorescent era.
Two signs. One remodel. A franchise location that no longer has to call a sign service truck every time a tube fails on a forty-degree morning.
Project Snapshot
Port Orchard, WA 98366
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The Featured Sign: Rebuilt Cabinet, New Light Engine
Each Taco Time letter cabinet came off the wall as a thirty-year-old fluorescent assembly. It went back on the wall with the same cabinet welds re-trued, a new LED retrofit kit, and a UL-listed Class 2 driver remote-mounted for clean service access.
- Construction: Aluminum returns, refurbished and refinished
- Illumination: UL-listed white LED modules, daylight-balanced
- Power: Class 2 LED driver, remote-mounted for service access
- Mounting: Direct-to-wall, wet-location electrical connection
- Listing: UL 48 sign assembly; UL 2161 retrofit kit
- Brand spec: Taco Time NW corporate typography and color preserved
Fabrication & Sign Family
Four passes built the program: rebuild, retrofit, mount, and verify. Below is the order our Tacoma shop took the work through.
Cabinet Rebuild
Both letter cabinets came off the wall, were de-rusted at the weld points coastal moisture had reached, re-trued, and refinished in the brand-spec color before any new electronics went inside.
UL-Listed LED Retrofit
UL-listed white LED module strings replaced the fluorescent tubes and ballasts. Modules are spaced for even face brightness — no hot spots, no dim corners, no banding across the long letters.
Wall Mount & Electrical
Licensed Plumb Signs installers hung both sets on the freshly finished façade, ran wet-location electrical to a remote-mounted Class 2 driver, and tied the circuit back into the building's existing sign-power feed.
Night-On QA
Every channel-letter set Plumb Signs delivers gets a post-install night QA — face brightness, color uniformity, driver thermals — before the franchisee signs off and the truck rolls back to Tacoma.
Design & Engineering Notes
The franchisee handed us two letter cabinets and a single ask: keep the brand look, kill the fluorescent service calls. The design work happened at the shop bench — module layout for even face brightness, driver sizing for the retrofit load, and remote-mount location chosen so the next service visit (if it ever comes) is a panel-cover removal, not a letter pull.
Engineering kept the original mount pattern so the rebuilt sets dropped back onto the existing wall anchors. No new holes through the new waterproofing. No re-permitting through City of Port Orchard for sign area or placement — the program lives under the existing permit envelope that was already approved for the location.
Why This Works for Restaurant & QSR Operators
Quick-service restaurant signage takes the hardest beating in commercial signage — long hours, all-weather operation, and an immediate revenue cost when a letter goes dark on a Friday night. Fluorescent channel letters got every QSR brand to the era of national rollouts, but they also drove the maintenance cost that operators quietly accepted as the cost of being open after dark.
A clean LED retrofit — rebuilt cabinet, UL-listed modules, Class 2 driver, remote-mounted for service access — drops the maintenance cycle from "every couple of years" to "every decade-plus" while cutting the signage power draw substantially. For a single franchise location remodel, that's the right call. For a multi-site operator, it's the conversation Plumb Signs has every month.
Where We Work · Kitsap & the Puget Sound
Plumb Signs ships LED retrofits, rebuilds, and new channel-letter programs across the Kitsap Peninsula and the broader Puget Sound region from the Tacoma shop.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Plumb Signs actually do at the Taco Time Port Orchard location?
What does a fluorescent-to-LED channel letter retrofit involve?
Does Plumb Signs serve Port Orchard and Kitsap County?
How long does a two-set channel-letter retrofit usually take?
What does "UL-listed" mean for a sign retrofit?
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Have a Fluorescent Sign That's Earned Its Retirement?
Plumb Signs runs LED retrofits, channel-letter rebuilds, and new sign programs out of the Tacoma shop — single-location QSR jobs through national multi-site rollouts. If you've got a sign that's draining service-truck hours, let's talk about killing the maintenance calls.
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