I received the LED prototypes in today. Red, Blue, and Superbright white. The superbright white is really just a wavelength of blue.

I can honestly say they are not any brighter than the incandescent bulbs. The good news is that the inverted lense actually disperses the light about the same as the incandescent bulb, thus doing away with problem that the LED lights are directional in natuure.

I think that the size of the LED is the issue. I big LED will most definitely be brighter, but you run into size problems with the lamp base.

It has only three advantages I can think of.

1. Last longer
2. Color choices
3. Will not fade and yellow over time.

So... I don't think it is really worth going through the expense of importing some in from overseas.

Sorry to get everyone's hopes up. I guess that's part of the experimentation process.

I am still waiting to hear back about the halogen fog bulbs though.

Do the lamps have external current limiting resistors on the LEDs?

Do you know if the manufacturer is running them at peak output (might be a trade in lifetime)? Have they considered heatsinking them (using the gauge body) to run higher power, or maybe pulsing them?

If anybody wants some from a source here in the U.S., here you go.

http://autolumination.com/otherleds.htm

Look for the Ba7s bulbs.

Unfortunately this guy is a :dhead:

I contacted him at the end of least year about getting some prototypes made for me for a Porsche instrument cluster. Told him I could sell lots and lots of them. He gave me good pricing for these in bulk and said 30 days for the prototypes.

I waited and waited for 90 days and nothing. Finally, he says... "Sorry, gonna have to give you your money back".

A month later, he has the bulbs listed on his site as "Porsche Instrument Bulbs". Hmmm I wonder where he got the idea!

So last week I ordered some and asked him about pricing again... now they are triple the original cost. Bastard!

I know, my fault. I gave him too much info.

Supposedly they have the resistor integrated to be compatible with automotive electrical systems. Not sure about the "peak" voltage issue.

I ran them from 12 volts and also from 9 volts (just to see) and couldn't tell any difference in brightness.

As far as providing power to them, I tried two methods... using the gauge body as ground and postive voltage to the end of the light.

I also tried a different bulb receptical with seperate postive and negative leads.

I can get ANY type of bulb made.

Xenon, halogen, LED.

Should I look into getting these bulbs made with a different type of gas, like Xenon? I'm sure the manufacturer can make a regular gas bulb, but use a brighter gas. But then you run into heat and voltage issues.

Maybe the limitation is just the gauge design. There is only so much light that can creep around the edges of the gauge faces.

I am very frustrated. Ugh!

Unfortunately, my digital camera doesn't take the best pictures of dimly lit objects.

Here is the tachy

It is actually brighter than in the photos. Just not any brighter than new OEM bulbs.

blue

Hi!

Just thought I'd post some pix of an experiment I did with some 10,000 MCD Blue LEDs. I got them on ebay from a guy in Hong Kong. No problem w/ shipping. You are looking at a temp gauge and a voltage gauge. There are 3 leds per gauge.

Just use a 330 ohm(*1/2 watt) resistor per ea. easy to get, easy to solder. Use shrink tubing to keep them from shorting.

*These LEDS use 423mW @ 12v...3 of them use 1.3w... The stock bulbs use 2w so there is no need to worry about the fuses.

Here is another picture...They are plenty bright enough. I plan to do the whole dash in blue. I purchased 100 leds for the project. I also got 100 10,000 mcd RED leds for signal/marker lights.

I used regular phone wire.

(1)Once the soldering is done, put on shrink tubing
(2)3 leds taped together with elecrical tape
(3)front view

Just replace bulb holder with this. Add tape as needed to wedge into the hole. You can twist together the ends, solder, then crimp onto stay cons so you can use existing wiring...

Here's how it looks without the shrink tubing...

There are lots of possibilities for this. I was just looking for a "drop in" solution.

I will speak with my "source" and see if there are other possibilities as far as brightnesses of bulb.s

FWIW I think the main reason some new cars use LED's (in taillights etc) is for "responsiveness" and not brightness. Of course you should get more brightness if you just use more / larger LED's, right?

I am going to make a taillight assembly with programmable patterns. Each function (brakes,signal etc...) will be replaced with say 20 or 30 leds.

Did Andy take pictures for you?

-Rusty

The regular lights in the instruments seem bright enough to me. Just make sure you have good 12 volts to the bulbs. If you need color, I recall seeing at one time little transluscent "condoms" that slip over the bulbs, in colors.

I know there is an outfit out of Australia that sells halogen extra brightness bulbs for automotive, not sure if it is for instruments or not, but they had tail light bulbs.


Used to work on NASA Space Station at Ames we worked on plant growth tests to grow food in space. we designed and built large arrays of red, Green Blue LED's we could vary the power to each color,and hence change the total color. turn them all up evenly and we got white light. Purpose was to vary the light color to determine optimal color for plant growth using low power. (power is limited on space station) this was when blue first came out, somthing like $5 each for blue, and about 5 cents each for red and green. We used about 10,000 LEDS in the arrays.


dave

I know they're pricey, but has any one used the conversion by North Hollywood, if it works maybe we can do a group buy. When I call and inquired it was about $200.00 to do all 3 gauges.

Sorry to hear about your findings. I've used these guys LED's on a car project I completed last year. I lit up my gauges with their blue inverted cone bulbs and they worked really well. I'm not sure if they have bulbs for our cars as I've not replaced any of my gauge lights yet, but those of you who know what we need will be able to tell if they offer the correct LED. Their site is:

www.superbrightleds.com

I have no connection with them other than I've done business with them in the past and they're great to work with. Their prices even look to be a bit lower than autolumination. If we need a specific type of bulb, you can email them describing what kind of bulb needed and they'll do their best to come up with it, or build it. I did this with the bayonet bulbs and a couple months later they were in stock.

I am awaiting the response from the real manufacturer about alternative solutions.

Regards,

Karl

Hmmmm, do they work in the wheel wells?