Couple of questions in regards to replacing my dash lighting with LEDs.....

I thought it would be just simply buying them and swapping them out. Purchase presents the first obstacle. "Wide View Angle" - "Refractor Wedge" - "Wedge Inverted" - "Wedge Side Light" - just to coin a view descriptions.....can anyone tell me what I need to do this swap????I am looking to replace the Instrument panel lighting and the switch lighting on my 91.

Second, will LEDs dim like the incandescant bulbs?

Thanks,
Klaus Cook
Houston, Texas

 

The LEDs will dim like incandescent. Wide angle will act the most like normal incandescent. LEDs are always housed inside the lenses, and there are different lens patterns, so the light can be very directional. Wedges are generally used for indicators, not for illumination. Are you buying the LEDs that are already packaged into lights bulbs, or are you building it yourself?

 

Thanks for the response. I was looking for "pull mine out" and "put the LEDs in their place". I didn't want to build anything, lol.......

 

Does anyone make those light assemblies with LEDs? That's about the only way to do a "drop-in" replacement. Otherwise, you will have to remove the bulbs from the stock light assemblies and replace them with the LEDs, with the proper current limiting resistor. With a typical LED running at 3 volts and 20 mA, each LED will need a resistor of about 550 ohms.

With the LED in place, and the stock rheostat designed for light bulbs, you CAN dim them, but the dimming would only occur near the low end of the dimmer.

 

http://www.superbrightleds.com/carbulb-notes.htm

link to identify your vehicles bulb types
http://www.sylvania.com/ConsumerProd...lacementGuide/

 

Damn...wish you hadn't posted that link...now I'm looking at replacing the outside lights also, lol.....which brings up another question.

According to the superbrightleds site, you should have red leds behind red lenses and yellow behind yellow lenses? A red led behind a red lens will show brighther than a white led behind the same red lens???????????

Klaus Cook
Houston, Texas

 

yep,
red led produces light mainly in the red wavelength spectrum which passess thru the red lens more efficiently, white led produces all of the visible spectrum and is usually more output toward the blue hot end of the spectrum.
won't be many years until we see led headlights OEM

 

LEDs are great for indication, but not so good for illumination. Many people claim they are so much brighter, but look at the flashlights they have now. They appear to be brighter due to the bluish color. But in reallity, it takes a lot of LEDs to really put out enough light to act as a headlight. And once you get the density high enough, you have to worry about keeping them cool. Sure they don't get nearly as hot as halogens, but they do get hot enough to destroy themselves. So they will likely need to be liquid cooled or have air fans.

There are already concept cars using LED headlights, and they have had to cope with the heat issue.

 

Carroll Shelby made a concept car (with Ford I think) that used LED head lights. They had to use liquid cooling to keep the emitters from burning up. It's like running too much power through a transistor, as in your amplifiers; they will burn up. But even if they're properly cooled, you can only protect them from accumulated heat. They'll always be exposed to their own generated heat, and that's what's going to kill them.

On the other hand, the LED manufacturers are putting out brighter and more efficient models every year. The bicycle industry has recently introduced some LED headlights whose outputs are claimed to rival those of low power HID lights. I haven't used one myself, so I can't say whether that's true or not.

That superbrightleds site confirms what I stated before: there are no such things as "white" LEDs. They're all made with blue LEDs shining on yellow phosphor to give your eyes the illusion of "white". Most of their photonic output are centered around blue and yellow spectral regions. This is why you should not put white LEDs behind any kind of color filters. If you want a particular color of LED light source, start with that color of LED. So for most automotive applications, you need either red, yellow, or amber LEDs, and maybe green for some instruments. There are these really cool looking aqua LEDs that I would use if I were to go through the trouble of replacing the bulbs in my instrument panel. I think the newer Mustangs have an option that lets you change the color of the instrument panel using a set of different color LEDs. ("Mood panel".)

The new traffic signals are using single color LEDs with no filters in front of them. The DOT has found that by putting a standard white filament bulb behind a color filter, they block out over 60% of the visible photons generated by the bulb.

Another problem with illuminating with "white" LEDs is that due their particular color spectrum, a lot of things don't appear the same as when illuminated by a filament bulb. So it's harder to discern things like color, texture, and depth. HID lights have this problem as well. So I now use both when I'm doing technical night rides.

 

XLT4WD, agree 100% on the last sentence, the "look" of HID is horrible,
and, to boot, it's nasty when looking in rearview mirror with those behind you,
surprised DOT let them through.
-What's a technical night ride?
-Other notes...I have 2 "maglites", 3 D cell versions, 1 is halogen, 1 is LED.
I did a side-by side test, and the LED appears to illuminate as good as the filament version, to my surprise. I like the 'looks' of filament more, but it seems as if our home lighting could go led soon, and that would be better than the coiled flourescent
bulbs sold today.
I bought a strand of LED christmas lights, HATED them. When you walk past,
there is some kind of high-speed 'flashing' effect that leaves you dis-oriented,
sounds wierd i know. Maybe it was a quality issue?

 

One of the more advanced features of automotive HID head lights also make them the most annoying to other drivers. One of the requirements for approval of such a bright light was that all the light had to be very precisely placed. That means using high precision optics to distribute the light across the road, and reach as far down the road without assaulting drivers in front of you. They do this by putting a horizontal shield across the light that sharply cuts the light projected towards the front above a certain level. So if you aim the light properly, drivers in front will normally not get hit by the brightest part of the light intended for long distance illumination.

The problem comes with bumpy roads. When the car bobs up and down with road irregularities, what the drivers in front see is very abrupt transitions of bright/dark patterns. On the other hand, older lights with less precise optics will not have such a sharp transition, so drivers in front will not see such abrupt changes in light levels. Other complaints from drivers using HID lights include "sudden" appearance of objects in the illuminated area. This is again from having such a sharp cut-off in the pattern.

A technical night ride is where you bike through really sketchy trails at night. You need all the lighting you can carry. Most people use a wide flood light on the handle bar and a narrower beam on their helmet so they can see around turns in the trails independently of which way the front wheel is pointed. Check out the mountain biking links on my web site:

geocities.com/eycchu

The LED manufacturers are making better products every year. This includes not just brightness and efficiency, but also color. Unfortunately, to get a "white" LED with better color distribution, they have to sacrifice some efficiency. It's done by tweaking the phosphor layer that the blue LED shines on, not unlike what GE does with their fluorescent lights, or color TV manufacturers did with the phosphor screens on CRTs. At this stage of LED development, they are still not quite as efficient as fluorescent lights. So I doubt you will see them replace home lights, except where compactness or portability is most important.

Those LED Christmas lights do not have a full wave rectifier powering them; they ARE the rectifiers. So they are only lighting up on half of the 60 Hertz AC sine wave that comes out of your wall outlet. In addition, most 3 volt LEDs start to conduct at around 1.5 volt or so, so they're actually on for about 40% of the cycle. A filament bulb has to heat up hot enough before giving off visible light, and it can retain enough heat during the short times that the voltage swings around zero so you don't perceive it going off. But an LED will switch on almost instantly at its conduction voltage, and switch off just as fast when the applied voltage drops below the conduction point. That's why the AC powered Christmas lights have a flickering effect. It's particularly bad when you look at them through your peripheral vision, as that's where your eyes are most sensitive to motion. A neat trick is to take one in your hand and swing it around a little; you can better see it turning on and off.

 

Around here, my daily commute contains a lot of large-radius rises. The road may crest a hill over the course of a mile. When one of those HIDs is coming over the hill toward me, or more than say a hundred feet behind me, I'm blinded because my eyes are not in the cutoff zone anymore. I added an auto-dimming inside rear-view mirror and combined with the OEM rear window tinting in the Aero, that works well. Side-view mirrors I manually swivel out and in when the worst is following me -- I fantasize that I can reflect their damned light back at them, but I doubt that that actually occurs.

Headlight intensity is a large enough problem for me that I actively seek to not drive in the dark anymore. I am that guy who is flashing his high beams at you as you approach -- I probably flash about six times/day on average. If ou have clouded plastic HL lenses, or broken sealed beams with water condensed inside that de-focus the light, I'm letting you know my displeasure -- if enough folks flash you, you might get the message to fix your GD HLs.

In stock trim, Cadillac Escalades are the worst around here, but pickups are pretty bad too, esp. in the rearview. I used to think Saturns were bad, ten years ago, but they look pretty tame by today's stds.

Small cars loaded up with stuff and without auto-leveling suspension screw up the idea of the cutoff zone too.

The state of headlights in the US is the primary reason I drive a minivan daily instead of a subcompact: to get my eyes high enough to survive my commute in the dark months.

 

If you have night time problems with bright lights, you might try some special glasses. There used to be something called Blu-Blocker that use lenses with only amber coloring and no neutral shading. We use lab grade versions to block high frequency lasers. They cut out the higher end of the visible spectrum, particularly the blues, which tend to scatter more and cause glare. They really do improve visibility in night driving, and make your eyes more comfortable.

If you can't find those, you might try shooting glasses, which use yellow lenses, and are more readily available. They're not as effective as true amber lenses, but you can try them to see if they help.

 

Wow, I completely forgot about those "As Seen on TV" gimmics, and there is actually a site for them still:

http://www.blublocker.com/

 

Well, $20 is cheap enough to try -- I ordered an "old man" . . . er "StarShield" set.



Do I have to wear a golfing hat and white slacks when I wear them? It'll be dark, no one will know, right?