Ben Nelson's Electro-Metro Build thread

[MPaulHolmes]

'sup?!

[bennelson]

um... hello back at you.

[bennelson]

Jealous of vpoppv's LED dome light upgrade, I had to do the same...


Well, I went and spent full retail price at the autoparts store for an LED Domelight replacement.

This one is a small PCB covered with an array of LEDs. It's roughly one inch by two inches.

The universal LED dome light came with three different "mock bulbs". Those are adapters that you pop in where your incandecent light would have been to supply power for the LED board.

The the LED board just gets double-sided taped in place.

A Geo Metro dome light is a simple thing. The switch for the light is built right into it. There isn't a lot of spare room under the cover, so it was a little bit of a trick to fit the LED board in there.



Here's the original heat bulb in place without the cover.


And here is the LED array (with the cover in place, which does act as a diffuser) with the camera on manual so it is at the same exposure as the other bulb photo.


You can see how much brighter the LED array is.

Anyone who is good with electronics could easily build a little circuit board of white LEDs and make one of these.

One feature I really like on a number of cars are the "footlights". When you open the door, there is a light down under the dashboard on both sides to see whats on the floor where your feet go. It might be fun to add lights under the dash on a Metro for better cabin light at night.

[Nerys]

be careful with those LED's many of them are "overdriven" so they don't last very long and as you noticed are rather blue. Please let us know how they run in a few months of usage especially once warmer months come into play and what brand they are.

[bennelson]

My car runs a lower than typical voltage on the original 12V system, because I don't have an alternator, or even a DC/DC converter. So, my 12V battery is usually something more like 12.6v than 13 or 14 that you often have with an alternator-powered car.

I think that may help with the life of something like an LED light.

Also, it's not really all that "blue". That's more of a "white balance" issue than anything. It's just more white than an incandescent bulb.

I do know that heat can be an issue with some LED setups. However, how often does a domelight run? Heat due to run-time should be minimal.

I suppose that in the summer, I could remove the plastic cover.

[Nerys]

The primary issue is LED need roughly 9 cm/2 cooling surface area for passive cooling per watt of consumption. These typically consume 2-3 watts yet have no where near 18-27 cm/2 cooling area in fact usually NONE :-)

yes you running without alternator will help a TON since the nitwits usually design for 12v forgetting that 12v is DEAD 12v battery and 12.9 is full charge and alternator power is 13.8v so yeah they can die fast :-)

please let us know how it goes. it DOES look very bright! alas your incan bulb was intended to run at 13.8 so its dimmer at your 12.6 but the LED could care less (as far as lumens) between 12.6 and 13.8

LED's rock ! just wish they would put just a tiny bit more effort into designing them. no use having a 50,000 hour diode if the resistor is only good for 5000 hours :-) hehe

haha just noticed your tag

Volts startle, amps melt

thats good :-)

I SO can not wait till I can go electric!! the moment its feasible on a budget to get 65 miles worst case from one I am switching faster than you can saw switch :-) (commute is one way 54 miles 3 people plus gear sometimes trailer (tiny trailer)

I can charge at work so the moment I can manage that bahbye gasoline. (just reminds me how much I hate GM :-)

[kimer6]

I have been Eco Modding my house. My 12 volt backup lighting has gone thru its 4th generation since building it 21 years ago. I recently replaced all of the bulbs with 24 LED arrays. They are nicely bright as you can see.

I bought mine from Superbrightleds.com and I am very happy with their service. They have side marker bulbs as well as ones for the overhead light (they are called Festoon Bulbs) which fit in with no mods. The flat ones with the little yellow patch put out way more light than the old fashioned ones that look like the common LED style.

This web site is very entertaining. I wonder how long it will take for the DOT to approve LED headlights. Ebay also has lots of LED bulbs from China but be careful! A $.99 cent bulb might have a $25 dollar shipping charge.

[Nerys]

and that is NOT a problem if it really is a $26 bulb :-) ebay charges fees on price but not shipping so some will transfer some of the price to the shipping to save money. IGNORE THIS. just figure out what your "total price" shipped is. Decide is that price good or not :-)

I have about 50% of the house converted to LED including finally the kitchen. Probable the only room I won't convert to LED is the garage so 26watt CFL's work fine in their for as LITTLE as we ever turn those lights on (maybe 10 times a YEAR for a few minutes at a time)

if I ever start using garage lighting heavily I might convert that as well.

The eventually goal is to take the "lighting" off the grid. IE battery pack converter and solar panel JUST for the lights. Thats a long ways away though :-)

be careful with those festoon LED's they have ZERO cooling and tend to burn up pretty quickly.

its also hard to find them in warm white and I hate the cold white. I prefer around 4k not the 6-8k those tend to run.

I am not waiting for "dot" to approve led headlights I could care less what they approve and anything they approve will be well outside out price range.

I am just going to CONVERT a normal headlamp. they approve the fixture not the filament so I can skirt the rules a bit :-)

[bennelson]

I finally used the dome light in actual night-time conditions.

WOW! Is it ever an improvement over the old light. Dramatically brighter - really lights up the whole car.

[Tweety]

You can do a lot of fun stuff with LED's... This is the brake light on my bike... Not manual exposure on the camera... The camera decided to treat the LED's as a "darker room", but the two pictures are taken about a minute apart in the exact same lighting...

A pair of 25W Halogens vs 10 3W Super LED's... 50W vs 30W... The 30W wins hands down...