Got some fancy dashboad lights from Europa spares that need BA 9 bulbs. Weren't paying 99p extra for a bulb so made my own LED bulbs. Also use 1/10 of the power too.

First make cutter for the plastic base insulator, done by filing teeth into some 10 mm steel tube.

cutter for insulator

Obviously the insulator is drilled beforehand, cut and then pressed into the lamp body.

LED with drop resistor fitted inside body (9 mm kunifer fuel pipe) prior to filling with epoxy. Notice the LED has been filed down - this works better at illuminating the Europa lights.

lamps prior to filling with ep

The positive contact made from piece of flattened copper wire and soldered on.

And guess what, they work!!

(just sitting here waiting for someone to tell me you can buy these for 27 p ..... )

How positively enterprising of you.
Nice one.

I'm a bit disappointed you didn't build your own wafer fab to grow the LED chips as well

How did you construct the bayonet pins that hold the bulb in place?

quote:

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Originally posted by MikeRJ
I'm a bit disappointed you didn't build your own wafer fab to grow the LED chips as well

How did you construct the bayonet pins that hold the bulb in place?

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Excellent - you might want to add some side firing leds to fill up your reflector as it makes them less directional. Most leds have a very narrow angle of view but the latest Luxeon ones have 180 degree (upt to a point).

Check out http://stores.ebay.co.uk/warden-jp2002_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm for some ready made alternatives. I have converted all my lights to leds except the headlights which will be converted to HID very soon.

quote:

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Originally posted by RazMan
Excellent - you might want to add some side firing leds to fill up your reflector as it makes them less directional. Most leds have a very narrow angle of view but the latest Luxeon ones have 180 degree (upt to a point).

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This link is to a 1 watt version of the type you are using - incredibly bright with a good angle of view. He does loads of types of 'bulb replacements' but they use the later SMT technology based leds.

Or Google; LED 1 , they sell everything including matching suitable resistors for automotive use.

yeah, I saw that - there is some sort of duffuser but I suspect internals are regular narrow angle LED; I was hoping I'd find a wide angle white LED.

Nope, have a closer look at the beam spread and you will notice that it is much wider than the 5-10 degrees of conventional LEDs.
This is a close up of the 3W version which uses 3 of the 1W jobbies firing foward with more around the outside firing radially, filling the reflector.



It is also worth noting that you only want to use white LEDs if you want white light (for forward facing side lights) Don't use a red / amber lense or you will filter out a LOT of the light and end up with a very dim light (LED light frequency is very narrow). Use the coloured LEDs with clear lenses - much more efficient.

[Edited on 25-10-07 by RazMan]

nope, i was referring to this:



unless custom LEDs are made, one will struggle getting lots of LEDs to face side ways - the corrugations on the side imply it is some sort of diffuser. maybe I can incorporate something like this in the mk2 version ?

The metalwork is purely a heatsink - it actually uses the same LED as the ones pictured above, but these have an alluminium disc acting as the heatsink.