Here's the light pattern with 0.5A per LED Click to view attachmenton the ceiling w/o the glass lens. Basically what the manufacturer said it would be.

The glass lens fits nicely with the printed spacer. I believe the earlier lenses have a deeper cavity.

Here's the light pattern with 0.5A with the glass lens. The effect of the glass diffusers can be seen.

As Chi-town mentioned, there will be some loss of light because of the glass diffuser. It seems to be about 15%.

With 0.5A at 1 meter, I measure:

10000 Lux w/o glass
8500 Lux w/glass

At 0.35A at 1 meter:

6000 Lux w/o glass
4500 Lux w/glass

Redesigned the spacer rings so the boards can screw into them. This is how they will be assembled.

These are the wrong screws. These are #4 x 5/16 whereas the correct screws are #2 x 1/4. They'll do for now.

The first fully built up PCB. Somehow I managed to not order the correct caps for input and output filtering so had to use smaller lower voltage caps. Original caps should be 100V whereas these are 50V.

Click to view attachment

Started doing some burn in on the first unit. Will run this for a couple of days to make sure it works. The LEDs are running 0.5A and the total unit power dissipation is just under 14W or just about 1A at 14V input.

Comparing the light output with the headlights on my '14 328, these are less than 1/2 as bright. The headlights on the 328 measured 19000Lux at 1 meter whereas this unit measured 8700Lux with the glass lens.

From early measurements, it looks like there's about a 40C rise in temperatures over ambient. That's about what I expect. It will be interesting to get this in an enclosure and see what happens.

Looks great!!! Cant wait to get a set!!
That a lot of R&D time invested in these, but looks like it will be worth it

This is so cool, I am really enjoying seeing your progress on this project!

Jeff B

Burned in the prototype for about 20 hours this week. It still works so that's a good start. With little airflow, the PCB temperature was about 50C above ambient. It will be interesting to see what the temperature rise is when operated in the case.

Put the LEDs in the case. To center the glass lens and LED board, some clips were printed to hold the board while the clips are installed.

Click to view attachment

The metal clips will need to be made for each unit. The original only had 2 clips and I'm using 4 clips for the PCB plus the clips are deeper than the originals.

Click to view attachment

The PCB fits nicely in the case. Will run this for a while to make sure the temperature rise is ok.

Click to view attachment

Not sure how to connect up to the existing wires yet. The ground spade and wire in the fixture were not in good shape with a fair amount of oxidation.

Click to view attachment

Can you take a pic of the light output on a wall from about 8' away?

This is the light pattern projected on the ceiling about 7 feet away.

Click to view attachment

Got the prototype lit up in the foglight enclosure. Been running this at 12V @ 1A for about 2 hours. The internal temps seem to be ok at about 65C. This means a temperature rise of about 45C. So in 50C weather, the internal temps should be below 100C.

Later tonight or tomorrow I hope to compare the light output with the fogs on my '71.

Click to view attachment

Compared the output of the LED foglight to the foglights on my '71. Here's the standard foglights on the car. The light has a nice cutoff top and bottom giving just a narrow light band.

Click to view attachment

The driver side foglight is covered up and the LED foglight is lit up right next to the car. The LED does not have a sharp cutoff and the additional intensity of the LED washes out the tight cutoff of the passenger side foglight.

At 1 meter, here are the measurements of the lamps:
914 Foglight: 1800 Lux
LED Foglight: 5500 Lux

The LED foglight is 3x brighter than the standard foglight on my '71 although the upper cutoff is not as sharp with the LED as the standard foglight. The LED may need to be adjusted a bit lower to not be too bright to oncoming drivers.

Click to view attachment

That upper washout will be blinding to oncoming traffic

Would the fog light lens make a difference ?
I do not know so I figured I throw it out there.

Your 71 should have the early TN1-TN2 lens.
The LED fog lens is a later TN4.

Yes the '71 has the early lens and the LEDs have the later lens. The lens has got to have an effect on the light pattern. The TN4 with the LEDs actually makes brighter vertical bars. It would be best to have no lensing with the LEDs but the goal is to retro-fit these LEDs in existing fixtures.

I need to put the LEDs in an early TN1/2 lens. Anyone have a TN1/2 fixture they would like to volunteer for a while? Where's @mepstein ?

I can send you one tomorrow.
@Spoke

Thanks. You mentioned you had a nicer foglight fixture you wanted to use on your car. Are you sending that set too? I want to get the boards built up for your car and I might as well have the fixtures so I can install the boards on the lenses.

@mepstein

I have two early sets I can send you. One question, to remove from the car, where are the wires connected.

That's a good question. I don't know how the foglight ties in with the wire loom. That's still something I need to work out. The wires on my '71 foglights are very short at the fixture. Not sure if there's more slack inside the trunk.

It would seem that the 914 wire harness would include the wires right to the foglight as part of the harness.

So should I cut wires and plan on adding connectors or can I remove wires at the housing. I’ll do whatever you think best.

Open the housing and disconnect the wires! No cutting allowed!

Certainly cut no wires. Looks like a plus for us all. Now, since I have a pair of old Bosch rectangular fog lights mounted on my TR6, should I order LEDs for a Porsche or a Triumph?

Agreed. My LED boards are designed to be plug'n'play without cutting the vehicle wiring using the existing bulb plug to power the LEDs. An exception to that are the Triumph Spitfire and TR6 where the bulb sockets are so unreliable that LED boards connect directly to the wire loom bypassing the bulb socket.

For the 914 foglight, there's not much play in the wiring at the foglight fixture. I didn't think there was a connector for the the fogs inside the trunk. One issue is the condition of the ground spade connector. The one foglight fixture from Mark the ground spade was rusted onto the lug on the fixture. For the foglight the original bulb socket will not be used as the reflector and bulb socket are not used with the LEDs.

I'll make it work with the existing wires.

I'm working on a 911 variant of the foglight like the 914 that I'm doing now. The 911 will use an LEDdynamics 4015 constant-current 350ma module. For the 911, I can't put any circuitry behind the PCB like the early 914 foglights.

Click to view attachment

Early ones are on their way. They are in much better shape than the first set. CA car vs PA car. They came apart easily. Except the one little grub screw that evaporated into thin air.

Jerry - Thanks for doing this.

If you can forward a single square fixture, I'll design a board for it.

@StratPlayer


If you don't have an extra fixture, maybe @mepstein has an extra square foglight fixture.

No, I had a set from a ‘75 parts car and couldn’t give them away so eventually threw them away. Ask chi-town. He’s backdating a later car. Might have fogs.
I still think there is potential in the hood lights. They are on many marques and rally cars.

Sorry no fogs on my 75'

I have a rectangular fixture that is missing the glass lens I can send you .
PM me with an address and I can sent it out tomorrow- i backdated my bumpers so I will be getting the early round LED that you are working on now, but my 75 wiring harness has the female connector for a spade from the light for + , the ground was supplied not by wire but thru the light body which grounded to the frame thru the mounting to bumper and bumper to car chassis .
Anyway let me know if you want this light to use for your mock up
Phil

Are you going to try different optics or main lenses to see if you can get the pattern back under control? If not these things will be dangerous to other drivers on the road.

Do regular fogs have a cutoff?
I know if I left the fogs lit on my Durango, cars flashed me.

The way most newer cars are wired from the factory you can't turn on the fog lights w/o having the headlights on. Once the headlights are on the fog lights will turn on but once you turn on the high beams the fog lights turn off. After the high beams are turned off and back to low beam the fogs turn back on. You can wire the fog lights so they can turn on w/o the headlights on. I plan on doing just that on my 6. I may even use my fog lights as daytime driving lights along with my euro led front turn signal lights.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=330111

Once the fog lights/headlights are adjusted there shouldn't be a problem with blinding oncoming traffic. Yes, you will get the people that still flash their lights at you if they think it's too bright. There's not much you can do about that. I drive a pickup truck as my dd and even with the headlights on low I get the oncoming traffic flashing their lights at me. My dd has factory headlights on it but it's the height of the vehicle that puts the headlights right inline of sight. The height causes it to seam brighter then what they are. Then you get the newer vehicles with their led/high res lights that seam way too bright as well. All are within DOT standards but still other drivers may feel they are too bright and flash. I get this a lot when I drive my truck. I even showed an elderly gentleman that complained that my high beams where on in a parking lot. When I showed him it was on low beam vs high beam he apologized and went on his way. Like stated once adjusted properly there shouldn't be an issue.

There's a big difference between an old 35 watt halogen bulb behind secondary reflector and multiple LED output straight out the lens.

If you look at the output shot he posted the light is everywhere there's not even a focused beam to aim.

LEDs are meant to be in a projector housing with a defined cutoff to be legal and safe for oncoming traffic.

I spent a year dealing with LED lights and SAE/DOT regulations and there are some pretty specific limitations to keep you from blinding others.

With out improved optics and light control these are just a bad idea

I think I'll be able to cut down on the upper washout by applying a shade over the top of each LED lens. Will be doing some experimentation to see what is the best shading to achieve a sharper upper cut off.

Put the board into one of the fixtures provided by @mepstein . The LED lenses and holders fit under the early glass without any spacers as with the later glass. So the original clips can be used.

Mark, I'm planning to paint the fixtures since these will be ready to be installed when I return them.

The early lenses are at least 5mm deeper than the later lenses.

Does anyone make the rubber gasket that goes around the lens? Or is this part of the lens? @Mikey914

914 Rubber makes them

Thanks. I ordered 2 sets. Didn't find them at first. They were on the gasket page and not on the lens page.

Ill make sure they get cross listed. We also ma in e protective lens covers and the spring clips that hold these into the outer rings.

Finally got the 2nd 914 foglight assembled. This discrete converter kicks ass but is a pain in the ass to assemble.

The board on the left is a 911 foglight. I'm hoping to get those installed on my 930 this weekend. The 911 foglight uses a boost module and is much easier to assemble. The only difference at this point is the module is 350ma whereas the discrete converter is 500ma. I'm hoping the 911 foglight will still be significantly brighter than the OEM bulb even with the lower 350ma current.

If the 911 foglight is bright enough, I may go with the module for the 914 foglights. I have 4 of these first 914 boards that I will build up. I'll put a pair on my 914 and give the other pair to mepstein.

Here's the 911 foglight fitted in the lens. The fit is perfect and plastic spacers keep the board in place. Since the reflector is part of the fixture, there can be no components on the backside of the board like the 914 foglight.