LED Lightbulb replacements

LED,s are good. They last longer than filament bulbs and draw less current although that is not particularly an issue in a LR. The fact they last longer is good, if like me you have a Disco that requires the rear seats to be taken out to change the brake light bulbs!

One tip though, don't put LED sidelights in with a filament headlamp as the heat will destroy the LED quickly.

TonyB

I have never had to take rear seats out to change brake light bulb! Discos from 1990 up to srs2

On or around Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:26:05 +0000, John Oakes enlightened us thusly:

They work nicely in defender lamps, or series lamps.

The latest kind with sideways ones as well are better in lamps with reflectors.

To make the indicators work needs either load resistors or surgery on the flasher unit, depending on flasher unit fitted - the old-fashioned thermal kind will only work with load resistors.

The amber ones are not as bright as you might hope. They're OK for flashers, but not as bright as 21W bulbs. Red ones are better - it some sort of subjective thing.

white ones in the sidelights are seriously cool, though. I used 12-led in LR sidelights to good effect, and 19-led narrow angle in brake/rear and indicator.

Currently got 24-led wide angle in the minibus lights, they're pretty good and the 6 extra sideways ones make a difference. You'd want that type in a disco or RR light.

and finally: Buy 'em from America. Seriously.

it's ridiculous, but buying from them and paying 5 bucks for normal, non-tracking post is way cheaper.

I think he was refering to the side facing seats, you need to remove the top two bolts and drop it down to access the cover plate.

Peter

I was thinking about getting some LED lights for the rear of my ninety. A couple of weeks ago during a 'pay and play' day a tree jumped out behind me (honest) whilst reversing from some really bad ruts. I smashed the reverse light, tail light and indicator. In total I paid £2.50 in a mix a new and used replacement parts to fix the damage. I decided from then on it would not be such a good idea to buy the LED replacements.

Stew.

and you didn't have light protectors on - tut tut!

I replaced the lamps with LEDs on the back of my Range.. the cruise control has stopped working at the same time, I'm sure it's related.

Bill Hi,

most probably it is because of the significantly lower resistance of LEDs when compared to regular bulbs. If you connect a resistor you will most probably solve the problem.

What is happening in most probably due to the same reason that flashers need to have a resistor also in order for their relay to function properly.

Take care Pantelis

Thanks for the heads up.

Talking of alternatives, has anyone investigated the use of fibre optics for driving lights?

On or around Tue, 20 Dec 2005 08:01:15 +0200, "Pantelis Giamarellos" enlightened us thusly:

cruise has an interlock with brakes, doesn't it? might be sensing from the brake light circuit.

Might be but I thought it was a seperate switch in the pedal box. I'd split the bet between your suggestion and knocking/disturbing some other cruise related wiring or tubing. If a petrol engine...

Oh I am in an anarchic mood tonight, you don't need lights to be fitted at all if you are not using the vehicle during the hours of darkness, and if you are, paint it black so no-ones will see you are illegal :)

On or around Tue, 20 Dec 2005 22:02:42 -0000, "Larry" enlightened us thusly:

and install stealth headlamps behind the grille.

better yet, stealth IR headlamps and use night-vision goggles.

Always fancied trying that.

Steve

LED's are current driven, not voltage driven - fit no resistor & something will have to blow or burn. You should be able to look up the required current for the LED you have and chose a resistor to suit the voltage you're running at, then the LED will work correctly. Resistor in series, of course, not in parallel.

HTH

Karen

Surely the vehicle lights have integrated resistors, for the fixed supply ? BTW not only do you need the required current, but the forward voltage drop of the diode, which varies with the LED technology, from

1.2 V to 4-ish for white Luxeon Lumileds. Then R= (Vsupply-Vf)/I where Vf is the forward volt drop, I is the current in Amps. R is then in Ohms.

Steve

On or around Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:17:58 +1000, "Karen Gallagher" enlightened us thusly:

yeah, but we're not talking straight LEDs, we're talking arrays with suitable resistors to run on 12-14V supply.

However, the old-style thermal flasher units rely on the current in the bulb to make 'em work right, and the new-style electronic flasher units use a reduction in bulb current to trigger "bulb failure" mode and flash at the wrong speed (which the old ones did anyway). Unless, of course, you're talking about the one in mine which has the track to the bulb outage pin on the IC cut, so that it flashes normally all the time, even with the LED "bulbs".

what's odd is that the amber bulbs are made with LEDs at 8800 mcd each max. axial intensity, while the red ones are 7500mcd. But the red ones look brighter, subjectively, than the amber ones, in identical bulb housings.

I emailed them about this, and suggested that they might look at brighter ones for the amber things, if such exist. 'course, it might be possible to drive them harder...

What's even odder is this goes against the photopic sensitivity curves of the eye (

if you're interested )- or, we can't see red as well as we can see orange . Orange is a LOT closer to our peak sensitivity than red. Steve

On or around Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:03:43 +0000, Steve Taylor enlightened us thusly:

beats me. I invite anyone to call in and observe, though. You can also observe the same effect on Grumble... the amber flashers aren't as bright as you might expect.

If I get some pennies, I might buy some of superbrightleds "4 inch truck lamps" which are 25 bucks apiece. they'd make nice trailer lights. see what they're like. They'd go quite nicely on the back of a landy, of course, too :-)