Messing around with LEDs

[FrodoGT]

So I bought my hatch with no ac and the lights on the heater unit had a burnt out bulb.

I tried to replace the bulb but no matter how many I went through I either kept breaking the filament or they were burnt out before I put em in. So I got fed up and decided to make something better. I went to radio-hack and got some leds and proceeded to learn something about resistance. Well, pictures speak better than words. So here it is.

Its really not as bright as I would have hoped for. I used 5400mcd leds, which were the brightest ones they had..and its barely visibly at dusk, and it needs to be dark to really see em, and its not as vivid as I had hoped. Im thinking about also experimenting with blue, brighter leds (I have seen 8kmcd reds) and also a nifty wide angle led I have seen, since the lights just stick straight into the heater unit I imagine they arent using the proper viewing angle. BTW the lights are dim-able.

I was also considering getting a spare unit from the junkyard and trying to clear out the frosting on the panel, so that the light shines through better. Give me your opinions guys!

[BLU CIVIC]

would be awsome if it was brighter

[viper-blue]

The lights could stand to be a bit brighter, but sometimes a mellow light is better for night driving anyhow. LEDs kick ass for longevity. Aside from finding whatever is making them blow all the time, LEDs are a good alternative. You just can't blow them suckers

[FrodoGT]

Nothing was making them blow, one of them worked when I got it. Theres two bulbs in there. They are just so fragile. Like I said in the near future I am going to experiment with brighter leds, or even "strawhat" wide angle ones. that will project the light in a better direction to illuminate the icons.

Also, if that goes well then my next fun project will be alot bigger..Ill give you a hint.

[BLU CIVIC]

what are taillights, alex

[FrodoGT]

All around lights...

[FrodoGT]

So I got around (got bored) to messing with some more of my interior lighting. I pulled the a/c unit back out and dissasembled it to see what really makes the lighting inside tick. I found a large chunk of water clear plastic, similar to fiber optics. The plastic surrounds the leds and the light travels through it. I noticed that the viewing angle of the leds is very narrow and most of the light was being wasted by going straight up. so I crafted some reflectors (aluminum foil) to direct the light into the plastic and it works GREAT! The unit is now much brighter, and I would say almost as bright as the stock white lights. I could still get it better with a wide angle led though. But it is plenty bright and not distracting.


This time I decided to tackle the cluster! I started by removing it from the car and inspecting the twist-n-lock plugs. It became immediately obvious that it would be very difficult to get these to work with a resistor. So instead i decided to try painting the bulbs, I used ed acrylic model paint, applied liberally. And well, here are the results! I think it looks very nice, the color came out just right..the only problem is that my left speedo lights dont work now, but I just havent taken the time to mess with the bulbs, either I broke em or the contacts got paint on em.

Anyway, here they are.

The resizing of the pics made em a little grainy but still clear enough.

Here you can see that the two left bulbs on the speedo arent lighting.

I will be getting a cluster with a tach very soon, I just cant seem to find one locally thats not auto..



7 color guages, within a day after I installed them the top two began to only change to red green and yellow..im too lazy to send em back for exchange so it looks like they will stay red. I got them so incredibly cheap though, so I dont mind.



Before


After

[Tony]

What kind of gauges are those? Wanting to get a set of gauges for mine, and I don't like the ones that light up the whole backside, something like yours is easier to read and keep track of the needle

[FrodoGT]

They are glowshift. I didnt go through ebay though, I went straight to their direct site. http://www.glowshiftdirect.com/

I paid I think 104 for the whole set with the pod which fits great, the ones i have are the 7 color blacks. Not the tinted, Ive heard some people say that the tinted ones are a little hard to read in direct light, but they look solid black when they are off. I sent them an email about the color change problem and they promptly gave me an RMA number to have them exchanged..but I just said screw it and put them back in. They look great and work great too. Even though I dont have the bottom two hooked up (waiting to do the engine swap). They are full sweep and move smoothly and read accurately (at least the boost guage does)

[KoDKingVegeta]

My buddy has glow shift gauges, he has the tranny temp, air/fuel, oil pressure, he loves them. But he got the tinted ones, and they are HARD to read in the day.

[thefooshmeister]

lookin sweet..i did some work on my crx gauges a while ago..took my cluster out and unscrewed the little plastic piece on top that was amber??? idk its been forever..but i took some of those report covers that are transparent colors..traced them out then cut to fit..put in a couple layers of green and 1 blue so it made my whole dash a nice "tahiti" ill have to take some pics sometime..

[Christ]

@ frodo, you can change the viewing angle of LED's by adding hot glue to the surface of it after it's mounted... the light will reflect away from the areas where glue is applied, due to the opacity of the glue... makes for an easy reflector in most cases, and also adds tinting in the case that they're too bright.

can you solder? if you can, take the glass bulbs behind your gauges apart, and use just the bases of them w/ some solder to make wire contacts in the base for your LED's... you will find that Christmas lights (the ones that you can change the bulbs from the plastic holder) have a perfect base for LED's to sit in, and the wires are separated by the plastic holder... also, you can then hotglue the LED and base into the original copper light base, and plug it back in, and everything fits nicely as if it's meant to be that way.

Just a few thoughts.. and yes, I've done it before.

[FrodoGT]

The problem I find is how to get a resistor (or two in my case) on the lead to the led while still fitting into the plug. 12v would surely pop it

[Christ]

oh yeah, +12v will destroy LED's like water on a hot lightbulb.

But.. you can do two things here... you can either use a Zener Diode on the circuit, or get creative... the plastic panel on the back that has the circuit lines on it, you can solder the resistor into a subtle cut in the line. OR you could always lay the resistor in the bottom of the socket before putting the bulb in.

www.metku.net (if I'm not supposed to put external links, admin plz delete.) you should go there, they have alot of information on LED stuff... keep in mind, it's a finnish site more geared to computer mods, but still helpful, I've used alot of the info there in other platforms.