LED Light Supplier?

[oldtamiyaphile]

I've got a Fiat 500 Twinair with Stop Start, and my first major mod is to switch out the battery for a custom A123 unit, saving about 16kg (batteries are in transit).

I've been playing with LED's on my cars to reduce amp draw, particularly important with S/S as when stopped the radio, lights, fan etc are still drawing current.

Anyway, I'm looking for a reputable supplier of LED lights, I ordered one set that were claimed to be 11W and their actual draw is 3.6W, which makes them less bright than than stock 5/21 globes. Surely nowadays LEDs must be available that are actually brighter than stock?

I've been using superbrightleds but I don't think they really have anything that does what their name suggests. Problem is there's no shortage of suppliers but I have a feeling all of them post exadurated specs (except superbright to be fair).

[nemo]

I'm surprised you vehicle doesn't come equipped with them or is it a mix? My third brake light is LED from the factory.

[nackerton]

Actually it's tricky to make the led bulb look brighter due incandescent optimized lamp optics. Here's what I have from peraccurate@ebay:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post362025

Where did you buy that A123 system?

[Ryland]

What LED's did you get that were not bright enough?
I have LED's from LED Lights, Bulbs & Accessories - SUPER BRIGHT LEDS in my car and the bulb replacements that have a single 3watt LED in each tail light of my car that draws 1 watt as a running light and 3 watts as a brake light, the red LED behind a red lens is brighter and crisper then an 5/25 watt incandescent bulb.

when comparing LED's compare lumins, not watts, I have a few bulb replacements that are large clusters of LED's and they draw a lot of power without much light output.

[brucepick]

+1 on what Ryland wrote.

With LEDs, to judge brightness, you compare the LED's lumens vs the stock bulb's lumens (see more detail below on that), you don't compare watts.

You don't compare watts for brightness because watts is only a rating of power consumed, not of light output. Of course if comparing incandescent vs. incandescent of the same voltage, watts consumed gives a good indication of light output. But now when comparing bulbs of a completely different design principle.

You can compare watts of the LEDs vs. of the incandescents to get an idea of how much power you'll save. However, the watts draw of brake and tail light LEDs is so low, you can pretty much just assume you're saving nearly the whole wattage of the incandescent bulbs you're replacing. Save yourself a whole lot of detail math.

HOWEVER when comparing lumens for a colored LED bulb, the LED's lumens count for more than the incandescent lumens. Here's why. The incandescent needs filtering (usually in the housing lens) to convert the white light to (say) red. That cuts the actual output to about 1/3 of what the bulb puts out. Because you're losing all the green and blue and other colors the bulb is putting out. The LED on the other hand, puts out only red light. So its output is not cut to achieve "red". Yes the housing lens is there but everything coming out of the LED bulb is red so it all gets through the red filter.

Here's my LED thread:
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...3-a-23045.html

And here's a pic of my setup. Done in the usual way where the bulbs show up as a discolored blob. Bigger brighter blob = brighter bulb. The LED setup is on the left, the stock incandescent is on the right.


See my LED thread for exactly which bulb I used, from superbrightLEDs.com. They were essentially $25 each, in summer of 2012.

[brucepick]

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

'''. I ordered one set that were claimed to be 11W and their actual draw is 3.6W, which makes them less bright than than stock 5/21 globe? ...

I think its a bit problematic reading current draw for LEDs. Sorry I can't recall the specifics. In any case you'd read milliamps and would have to derive Watts. If you just try to read Ohms resistance (and calculate from there) it goes wrong because the LEDs resistance changes when its under a real load, as I recall. As opposed to its Ohms when fed a tiny current from your multitester. I think its just not linear in that regard.

[oldtamiyaphile]

Originally Posted by nackerton

Where did you buy that A123 system?

I bought 2x 4S3P batteries off eBay. The two will be wired in parallel for a 4S6P pack, plus side being that one pack can be removed for cycling/ balancing without 'disconnecting' the battery. The 6P pack should be enough for summer driving, but a third pack (for 9P total) could be added for total security in winter. Cost $240 and save around 16kg. If the car wasn't under warranty I'd be able to go a bit further by removing the stock battery connectors, steel battery tray etc.

Originally Posted by Ryland

What LED's did you get that were not bright enough?
I have LED's from LED Lights, Bulbs & Accessories - SUPER BRIGHT LEDS in my car and the bulb replacements that have a single 3watt LED in each tail light of my car that draws 1 watt as a running light and 3 watts as a brake light, the red LED behind a red lens is brighter and crisper then an 5/25 watt incandescent bulb.

when comparing LED's compare lumins, not watts, I have a few bulb replacements that are large clusters of LED's and they draw a lot of power without much light output.

I bought the highest current (and not cheap) DRL (white) globes I could find on eBay. I understand the difference between lumens and watts, but my reasoning was that an LED array drawing a real 11W would have to be brighter than a 21W filament. The vast majority of sellers don't list lumens, and I have no way to measure that at home if they're fudging the figures.

The other issue is that higher current draw makes it less likely to trip the CANBUS bulb out warnings. You can buy CANBUS globes, but people have had mixed results from those too. Where possible, I'd rather have the current going into producing light than powering a resistor.

Anyway, I will be ordering a bunch from superbright, down the line I might try custom building, mainly for those DRL's.

[brucepick]

Oh, you have CANBUS? Very sorry to hear that. Seems silly to have to increase current draw in this project just to keep CANBUS happy. LEDs are more reliable than incandescent so you shouldn't need the warning system!

[oldtamiyaphile]

It's annoying, but all new cars have it (or will soon). I just went and pulled the third brake light and no CANBUS warning, so at least those are easy. In reality, it doesn't take much extra draw to satisfy CANBUS, 300mah does the trick, the only issue is with dual filament bulbs the low side needs to draw as much as the high side.

I have found some really bright lights at VLEDS 600 lumens, but not suitable for my application as far as I can tell. Superbright do have some DRL specific lights, but again not for my 7443 application. Oh well, I've got low draw bulbs that can do the job there until I can find or make something better.

Unfortunately, the SMD 45 tail laps you've used lamps don't come in a CANBUS version, and the nearest CANBUS only puts out only puts out 70 lm vs 120. Not enough I would think?

I've added the non CANBUS 1157 SMD 45's to my order, worst case they go in my Jeep, I'll experiment with resistors to find the lowest current I can get away with. I wonder, if anyone has any ideas to use a little more power from the tail light wire, rather than just loosing it as heat? I could possibly run the license plate lights off it, but then I'd probably get the plate light warning...

[Ryland]

If you are using them for day time running lights then why do you care how bright they are?
At 11 watts you should be getting pretty close to headlight brightness if the LED's are any good, but I've seen LED's vary from 30 lumins per watt up over 80 lumins per watt and a car head light is between 900 and 1,500 lumins.