M
Martin
Guest
No I don't mean a flippin Lexus conversion before anybody jumps on their soapbox 
On my Motorbike I have converted the rear light unit to LED's. I made it myself, it's not the bulbs you buy that are actually LED's.
My LED unit is basically a piece of Vero board that fits inside the lens of the rear unit.
Then I have made 2 seperate LED clusters, amde up of 4 rows of 5 LEDs. Each row of 5 LED's are in series and there is a resistor to limit the current flow and also to dim the LED's so that they look like tail lamp brightness. Then there is another resistor that gets dropped in parallel when the brake is applied that increases the current.
I did this for safety really, I have seen so many bikers riding with one of their bulbs blown, and to be honest how many of us check our rear lights? LED's have a very long lifetime and are very very resistant to vibrations unlike a filament bulb.
I was wondering about doing this to my Bravo, trouble is I would have to make 6 units as each rear light is made up of 3 segments with a bulb in each. Also I am unsure if I could get into the reflector area of the unit, anybod know if the rear light unit comes apart?
One other thing I have done is replaced the lights in my dash unit on the bike to LED's, the reason I did this was because it's a complete pain in the arse to replaces the bulbs if one blows. I started with Blue LED's (yes LAX power I know) and it looked fairly good but Blue LED's are very ver directional in their beam pattern so I could only see a very small part of each dial, even in total darkness. I then took sandpaper to the leds to diffuse the light, and it made the light spread much better, but it was far too dim for use, so I doubled up on the LED's and again it is too dim. So I changed to red ones and they a hella brught and illuminate the dials really well. Well recommended a change to LED lighting for dashboards.
I did it myself, not the real expensive ones that are sold on Ebay.
You need a 470 ohm resistor in series on the +ve leg to limit the current to a single blue or red LED, on the red LEd's they runa lower voltage, so I put 2 LED's in series. I am unsure if this would work well on a car as the wiring on the rear of a dash is normall on a flexible PCB. I guess if you could find the illumination +ve feed in the loom on the multiplug you got put a resistor on that. Not really recommended to run multiple LED's in parallel off one resistor though (a lot of head scratching going on here )
Just thought I'd let you know of my gadgettery !!!
One other thing with LED's as a brake light is they are near enough instantaneous illuminated once the brake pedal is pressed. You don't have to wait for the filament to warm up. You can see this really well on cars that have normal brake lights, but with a LED third brake light.
I do hope you enjoyed this trip on my waffle bus !!!
On my Motorbike I have converted the rear light unit to LED's. I made it myself, it's not the bulbs you buy that are actually LED's.
My LED unit is basically a piece of Vero board that fits inside the lens of the rear unit.
Then I have made 2 seperate LED clusters, amde up of 4 rows of 5 LEDs. Each row of 5 LED's are in series and there is a resistor to limit the current flow and also to dim the LED's so that they look like tail lamp brightness. Then there is another resistor that gets dropped in parallel when the brake is applied that increases the current.
I did this for safety really, I have seen so many bikers riding with one of their bulbs blown, and to be honest how many of us check our rear lights? LED's have a very long lifetime and are very very resistant to vibrations unlike a filament bulb.
I was wondering about doing this to my Bravo, trouble is I would have to make 6 units as each rear light is made up of 3 segments with a bulb in each. Also I am unsure if I could get into the reflector area of the unit, anybod know if the rear light unit comes apart?
One other thing I have done is replaced the lights in my dash unit on the bike to LED's, the reason I did this was because it's a complete pain in the arse to replaces the bulbs if one blows. I started with Blue LED's (yes LAX power I know) and it looked fairly good but Blue LED's are very ver directional in their beam pattern so I could only see a very small part of each dial, even in total darkness. I then took sandpaper to the leds to diffuse the light, and it made the light spread much better, but it was far too dim for use, so I doubled up on the LED's and again it is too dim. So I changed to red ones and they a hella brught and illuminate the dials really well. Well recommended a change to LED lighting for dashboards.
I did it myself, not the real expensive ones that are sold on Ebay.
You need a 470 ohm resistor in series on the +ve leg to limit the current to a single blue or red LED, on the red LEd's they runa lower voltage, so I put 2 LED's in series. I am unsure if this would work well on a car as the wiring on the rear of a dash is normall on a flexible PCB. I guess if you could find the illumination +ve feed in the loom on the multiplug you got put a resistor on that. Not really recommended to run multiple LED's in parallel off one resistor though (a lot of head scratching going on here
)Just thought I'd let you know of my gadgettery !!!
One other thing with LED's as a brake light is they are near enough instantaneous illuminated once the brake pedal is pressed. You don't have to wait for the filament to warm up. You can see this really well on cars that have normal brake lights, but with a LED third brake light.
I do hope you enjoyed this trip on my waffle bus !!!