LED Conversions ...

How to fix gremlins & general maintenance issues ...
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yarney
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Post by yarney » Mon Sep 03, 2012 4:21 pm

Great post bantum

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Post by El_Freddo » Mon Sep 03, 2012 5:01 pm

This looks much better than the way I did the brumby's interior light - huge round fluro! Makes night into day.

If anyone is going to upgrade their interior light do it this way!

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Gannon
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Post by Gannon » Mon Sep 03, 2012 6:21 pm

Bantum wrote: Do tell us more ... :?:

Well I started out with this
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Which worked too well and was like having a highbay light in the car and was way too bright.
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The issue was that after about a month, individual dies (the LED chips) started to flicker and die. On closer inspection, the normally yellow centre had turned brown and this is because they were driven with too much current and they had burnt out. I put this down to poor design as the current limiting resistors were 47 ohms which gives 50ma at 12v, but it should have been 100 ohm resistors for the normal 14v car voltage.

So I went in another direction....

I got a 3W Cree star emitter and a constant current driver, which keeps the current at a constant 350mA irrespective of the supply voltage.

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Being a large 3W device it needed some means of dissipating heat, so I grafted a aftermarket cd player heatsink into the interior light and the result was...
Image

Image

I also put one in the boot light and made a heatsink using some alloy angle
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I'll go get a shot of it in the car after I've fed the boy
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steptoe
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Post by steptoe » Tue Sep 04, 2012 8:10 am

Aha, I've had a few LEDs turn brown in a 12V downlight fitting dirct from HK, fed it directly from a std downlight tranny of 50 or 60W. Have since rad some trannys don't like too low a demand on them like 10W, that one may have been.

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Bantum
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Matching Ratings ...

Post by Bantum » Tue Sep 04, 2012 6:30 pm

steptoe wrote:... Aha, I've had a few LEDs turn brown ...
Yeah, I've come across a few of those too ! ( also some that don't meet expectations ) I suppose it's all about matching your existing light with an equivilent in L.E.D. & try not to over do it ... :idea:

One thing I did find with the dome light & brightness was with the choice of colour, a White light would be fine, but I chose Blue to match a theme I'm trying to develop for my Brumby. So it ended up being a bit 'duller' than the White, but if I take off the shroud - It Still give's off plenty of light ... :cool:

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Bantum
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Interesting ....

Post by Bantum » Tue Sep 04, 2012 6:47 pm

Gannon wrote: ... Well I started out with this ... Which worked too well and was like having a highbay light in the car and was way too bright ...
Overkill I'd say ... :) ... Did you try just a single panel ?
Gannon wrote: ... I put this down to poor design as the current limiting resistors were 47 ohms which gives 50ma at 12v, but it should have been 100 ohm resistors for the normal 14v car voltage ...
Were'nt they originally designed as a single panel ? - or did you mod them & put two togehter ? ... :!:
Gannon wrote: ... So I went in another direction ... I'll go get a shot of it in the car ...
How warm does it get ? + yes some 'lit' up shot's would be good ... :razz:

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Gannon
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Post by Gannon » Tue Sep 04, 2012 7:00 pm

This is the finished product in the car
Image

Steptoe Im guessing the LED downlight you are talking about is a MR16 style like this
Image
The driver in them is usually the same constant current driver that I pictured above so voltage shouldnt be an issue, its more likely a manufacturing issue of putting say a 500mA driver in a light with with LEDs only rated for 350mA.

I have 20 of these cheap LEDs in my house and they have been going strong for over 2 years. It all comes down to where ya get em from
Current rides: 2016 Mitsubishi Triton GLS & 2004 Forester X
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Post by Silverbullet » Tue Sep 04, 2012 7:16 pm

All this talk of LED's and too much current, reminds me of the all LED traffic lights springing up everywhere...and slowly dying row by row. I dunno about other states, but in Adelaide there are alot of traffic lights now where the big globe and lens has been replaced by an LED array. Only thing is they neglected to change the power supplies over so now the old bulb power is going into the new LED arrays, killing them off. You can tell how long they've been in by the rows of LED's that have died, saw one today that had every second row kaput! :eek:
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Post by steptoe » Tue Sep 04, 2012 7:42 pm

think I only just tossed it last nights garbage - was the same size fitting for low volt downlight MR16 ? but was covered in a shipload of ~3 mm white LEDS, the dead ones went a mouse pee brown stain look

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Subyroo
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Post by Subyroo » Wed Sep 05, 2012 4:08 pm

Gannon wrote:
Steptoe Im guessing the LED downlight you are talking about is a MR16 style like this
Image
The driver in them is usually the same constant current driver that I pictured above so voltage shouldnt be an issue, its more likely a manufacturing issue of putting say a 500mA driver in a light with with LEDs only rated for 350mA.

I have 20 of these cheap LEDs in my house and they have been going strong for over 2 years. It all comes down to where ya get em from
Is there much difference in the lighting in respect of intensity and color with those LED bulbs Gannon?
Peter

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Gannon
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Post by Gannon » Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:18 am

steptoe wrote:covered in a shipload of ~3 mm white LEDS, the dead ones went a mouse pee brown stain look
Yeah they are crap, no constant current driver in them, just a resistor, which is probably why they died
Subyroo wrote:Is there much difference in the lighting in respect of intensity and color with those LED bulbs Gannon?
There are usually 2 or 3 colours to choose from, warm white 3000k, which is about the same yellowness of a regular halogen, neutral white 5000k, which is a really white light like my interior light above, and then there is cool white 7000k which is a bluish colour
They are only about 1/2 to 2/3 the brightness of a regular halogen, but seeing as they use about 1/10 the power of a halogen they are worth it. The tricky bit is finding a transformer that will run them. Iron core transformers actually waste more power than the LED itself, but most electronic transformers wont work with LED because the LED doesnt draw enough to power to satisfy the transformer, they end up just flickering. There are a few LED drivers on the market but finding one that works with dimmers is tricky
Current rides: 2016 Mitsubishi Triton GLS & 2004 Forester X
Ongoing Project/Toy: 1987 RX Turbo EA82T, Speeduino ECU, Coil-pack ignition, 440cc Injectors, KONI adjustale front struts, Hybrid L Series/ Liberty AWD 5sp
Past rides: 92 L series turbo converted wagon, 83 Leone GL Sedan, 2004 Liberty GT Sedan & 2001 Outback
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Gannon
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Post by Gannon » Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:30 am

Silverbullet wrote: Only thing is they neglected to change the power supplies over so now the old bulb power is going into the new LED arrays, killing them off.
I doubt it. The LED arrays will have their own constant current power supply, otherwise they would have gone up in a puff of smoke the moment they applied the power. The problem is that they are running the LEDs at full power to achieve full brightness but because there are slight variations in manufacturing either the LEDs themselves or in the power supply, they are failing prematurely
Current rides: 2016 Mitsubishi Triton GLS & 2004 Forester X
Ongoing Project/Toy: 1987 RX Turbo EA82T, Speeduino ECU, Coil-pack ignition, 440cc Injectors, KONI adjustale front struts, Hybrid L Series/ Liberty AWD 5sp
Past rides: 92 L series turbo converted wagon, 83 Leone GL Sedan, 2004 Liberty GT Sedan & 2001 Outback
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Post by Bantum » Thu Sep 06, 2012 7:39 pm

Did a bit of a search & found this :

http://www.ozled.com.au/

Might be of interest ... :)

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steptoe
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Post by steptoe » Thu Sep 06, 2012 8:35 pm

Guess what didn't go out in the garbage, but should have ....

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still works.

Seen one normal low voltage as an interior light bulb in an old 76 Maz 323 !

Make good brake light bulbs ??

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Post by AlpineRaven » Fri Sep 14, 2012 8:09 am

Can you show us with the cree at night time - how well does it show?

We did have MR16 12v in the kitchen but causes interference with our TV so replaced to 240v.
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Post by nncoolg » Sun Sep 16, 2012 8:39 am

these look like they could be good for rear bulbs in the sudie sedans...
http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo ... angle/162/
I wonder how bright they are, compared to a bulb?
and would you get white, or red?
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Post by revmax » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:54 pm

They look pretty neat but why the need for 90deg on the sedans
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Post by nncoolg » Sun Sep 16, 2012 6:11 pm

Well if you used the normal ones that have a lot of LED's stacked around them like a hairbrush, you would only see about 1/3 of them and I reckon it would not look very bright.
The trading corner : the stuff that I need ATM -
# Vortex Main Dash Surround / Bezel ANY COLOUR,
# Vortex Radio, # RHD Vortex 4speed auto digital dash,
# RH-Side parking (86+) Vortex wiper transmission,
# EA82 AWD 4EAT,
If you have them please PM me :cool:

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Pin LED's ...

Post by Bantum » Sat Jan 12, 2013 4:02 pm

I was also thinking of putting LED's in the dash ( pin type ) ...

Next project though ... :)

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Post by Alex » Sun Jan 13, 2013 8:51 am

Bantum wrote:I was also thinking of putting LED's in the dash ( pin type ) ...

Next project though ... :)
Nah don't. I looked into this some time ago. LEDs don't have a very nice light dispersion and your cluster will have spots where the LEDs are really bright and other spots where it'll be very dull.

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