LED Back lights!

Im just having a little experiment with my back lights and trying to change them to LED style. Here's a couple of pics of one i've been working on its taking ages!!!! :eek: Im planning on doing both stop and tail lights and converting the tailgate ones into stop and tail lights. Haven't decided on fog light might leave it as a bulb behind yet. Its took 91 LED's just on the light in the picture! One problem im having is trying to keep the resisters cool for the lights cos they are getting so hot i can't touch them. Hopefully i'l have them all finished in a month or so and will show them properly.
 

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Looks like they will be cool when you've finished, good luck doing the rest.

You must have the patience of a saint :)
 
you've got a lot of patience!!

Looks good though! I was contemplating the feasibility of this a year or so ago. Good to see someone give it a go!!
 
eviljonny said:
Looks like they will be cool when you've finished, good luck doing the rest.

You must have the patience of a saint :)

lol it was something to do in my spare time now its stress stress stress!!!
 
I've started making the second light so here's some pics as im doing it.
First of all i split the light by using the oven method then removed the centre lens and marked it for drilling. I've joined all the negative terminal legs low down close to the lens and joined the positive ones high up. The black you can see is the outer casing of wiring which i've used to insulate the positve leg due to it being alot quicker and easier than black tape.

Still having resistor problems :evil:
 

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Have you thought about getting a circuit board produced to house the led's?
Just an option really,that way you could run the lights on less current to reduce heat.
Looks pretty good though :)
 
the leds are fine its the resistors that get hot so might have to get put them onto a big piece of metal to get rid of the heat
 
Paul D GTi said:
I've started making the second light so here's some pics as im doing it.
First of all i split the light by using the oven method then removed the centre lens and marked it for drilling. I've joined all the negative terminal legs low down close to the lens and joined the positive ones high up. The black you can see is the outer casing of wiring which i've used to insulate the positve leg due to it being alot quicker and easier than black tape.

Still having resistor problems :evil:

Did you drill the holes yourself?
 
You might be better to bring the voltage down to a multiple of the LED forward voltage by using a single switching type regulator. That way you won't need resistors and the switching reg won't produce much heat either...

Or use a single linear reg and heatsink to do the same.



Looking good. I was gonna do the same ages ago but never got round to it. I planned it all out and everything, just too lazy to do it :)
 
Well, read http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/pt5071.html and http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pt5071.pdf

If you look at the PDF file you'll see that pins 4-6 are connected to the power from the car (live), 7-10 are connected to earth, 11-13 give the regulated 12v out. You only need the two caps to smooth power, they are connected between earth and the input and earth and output...

Ask at an electronics stor for the appropriate caps

Input/Output Capacitors: The PT5071 regulator requires a 100µF electrolytic capacitor at the input and output for proper operation in all applications. The ESR
(equivalent series resistance) of both capacitors must be less than 250m W @100kHz. In addition, C1 and C2 must be rated to a minimum of 300mArms ripple current.

Ignore the rest, that is for voltage adjustment and standby control...

If you stick with 12v out and get leds with a Fv of 3v then you can run a load of sets of 4 leds with no resistors. Upto 1.5A...

If you look at the first link then you can request samples. I have done this for the same chip but with 5v output to use to power a USB hub in the car ;) They are shipped very quickly....

What is the Fv and current of your LEDs ???

There is one show on http://personal.inet.fi/private/vvog/morex/index.htm about halfway down. The big chip...Ignore the white box and blue wires as that's for the standby control.

The attached pic is the one I got from MP3car.com for the 5v regulator...

Hope that helps and doesnt complicate thing further... :)
 

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