Paul's how NOT to convert a Metro

[vpoppv]

Originally Posted by Angelus359

This is freaking awesome.
If I were not an unemployed poor broke (insert weathless adjective here) college student living at my godfathers house, I would like to do something like what you have done.

If I can inspire just ONE person to do a conversion, I will be extremely happy! What I attempted to do here is a sort of experiment of just how cheap you can get and still make something you can drive. After having used this car for over a year now, it has become obvious to me that it is both easy and cheap to do. I think that as a poor and broke college student, you actually have a few things going for you that would make a conversion easier! It only costs about one and a half payments on a Nissan Leaf and 3 months of your time

[Arragonis]

I have Ben's DVD, your thread, and a dead car in my garage.

All I need now is a fork lift.

And batteries.

Oh and a controller.

And

er

Oh loads of wires, wires are probably needed.

Seriously going to look at this. The B-series sale will finance this I think.

[bennelson]

You don't need the WHOLE forklift, just the motor.
Also, grab any contactors, fuses, gauges, and buss bars while you are at it.

[Arragonis]

I have started sneaky non-wife involved investigations and Gas (as in woosh air like substance) powered FLs are more popular here than leccy.

I am on the case though.

[vpoppv]

I installed an LED dome light bulb in my car today. My biggest concern was that LED's tend to be dimmer than standard bulbs in these particular applications. Geo Metros have particularly poor night lighting, so this was a big concern. I had to modify the bulb quite a bit to get it to work, as it was much larger than the supposed crossreference number would imply. I simply used aluminum foil to secure the bulb on the outside of the holder to make it work. Much to my surprise, it is actually quite a bit brighter than stock. The funny thing is that 2 of these, shipped from China, costs less than the stock bulb from Wal-Mart and the local auto parts stores.

[bennelson]

I have seen LED dome light replacements at the auto parts stores, but they always seemed a little expensive for what they were.

I also haven't done an LED upgrade, because, like you said, the lighting is bad enough in the car, and I didn't want to make it worse.

It's encouraging to hear that it works for you. I have been meaning to drop off a starter core at the autoparts store. Maybe I will do that tomorrow and check out the LED bulbs.

The other thing I was thinking is that the dome light on the Metro is real simple - it would be easy to mod to being a power source for a custom 12V light.

By any chance, do you have a "before & after" photo of the LED domelight? I will have to make sure to get one if I upgrade.

[vpoppv]

Well Ben, I tried my best, but I'm not getting very good shots. So I have one of the standard and one of the LED. The third picture is what the interior looks like with the LED, but I can't get anything but a pure black picture of the interior with the standard. I wish I knew how to better adjust my digital camera to extend the exposure time. FWIW, the bulbs I purchased were a 12 LED; I got the one with the most LEDs figuring (perhaps naively) that it would be the brightest. In retrospect, I think that was a wise decision.

[Automcdonough]

I've used those before, I love em. They always seem brighter to me.

[mora]

I did almost the same for my ICE car. I used PCB with pre-drilled holes and 5mm super bright leds. I could have put about 50 of those leds inside the plastic dome, but it was "too bright". I ended up with 32 leds and it was still brighter than original, and consumed about 2W. Oh, and it was cheap. I did exactly the same for my ongoing EV conversion.

Yours look good.

[bennelson]

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.