LED warning lights

[glutamodo]

A while back when browsing through the superbrightLED's website I noticed they had LED bulbs for old VW and Porsche type application.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/comme...mp;next=65

So I decided, what the heck, give them a try. I knew I'd also have to buy different type bulbholders with separate positive and negatives for the oil/gen/turn lights because if you use the stock bulbholders and wiring, the current path would be backwards, and LED's are polarity sensitive. The stock bulbholder works just fine for the high beam bulb though. Here's a pic of the two types of bulbs, plus the new bulbholder style I had to use:

I bought a white bulb for the high beam, (which is bluish white anyway) and red and green ones for the others. I stayed with the original bulbs for the speedometer lighting, as I like to be able to dim them, and LED's are not dimmable. I got around to putting them in my baja today. When I replaced the 'gels' on the speedo face a couple of years ago, I forgot to scuff up the turn signal one with some ultra fine sandpaper to make it less transparant, so I am able to see the bulb in there both before and after this modification. I took some pics to see how much difference there was before and after. They all got a bit brighter, I'm especially happy to have the high beam brighter, as on this speedometer it's always been a bit weak.

-Andy

Before:

After:

EDIT: Here is how it looks in March 2008 after I "finally" went and pulled this back out again and wet-sanded the green gels with 1500 grit sandpaper. The ambient lighting isn't quite as bright as the two pictures above, but you get the idea:

[metaljim]

looks pretty good man. how hard was it to fiddle with the little bulbs and such?
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[Jeckler]

Since LED's are polarity sensitive, won't it cause the charging system to not work properly?
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'63 Bug rebuild here.
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[glutamodo]

This car has a generator, not an alternator, so there is no "prime" current running through the warning light to kick the voltage regulator into charging. And even if it did, all I had to do was run the positive voltage supply to the center terminal of the bulbs instead of the outer as is done via the stock setup. I just had to move the warning light power supply and jumper that from bulbholder to bulbholder instead of using the tab on the bottom of the stock bulbholder. Still a valid current path, just not through the stock connections. Now, if I had an alternator, I'm unsure how well the current draw of an LED would work to kick the voltage regulator into charging, but I think it would work - watercooled VW's use LED warning lights and they work OK.

-Andy

[Bugorsh]

The alternator is internally regulated and provides a constant output so I do not think it will be affected by the LEDs.

The LEDs I have worked with can be dimmed by adding resistance inline, so I would think a potentiometer (your dash light dimmer control) would be able to dim them just fine. I believe the ELF (electroluminecent film) is also dimmable.
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[Frankenbeetle]

Nice. Now all I need is a way to make the left and right turn signal lights operate independantly.
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[Banzai KG]

[glutamodo]

I'm bringing this back up after a comment from Icy made me go and check the bulbs I got from them as to how well they do in fact, dim. I stated above that LED's are not dimmable, but as others have said, that's not true. So I hooked up my variable power supply to see just how dimmable the bulbs I showed above dimmed. My power supply (I built it myself when I was in electronics class in the early 90s) won't drop below 2.7VDC though. What I found was that it stayed at pretty much full brightness at anything over 8VDC. At 7VDC it was slightly dimmer (you might be able to use it in a 6V car) and from there down to the 2.7VDC bottom end of my power supply it dropped off steadily. So.... if you use those bulbs and your dimmer rheostat has a smooth curve from 0-8VDC then these would work as dimmable instrument lighting.

[Russ Wolfe]

The problem with the exciter voltage for the alternator can be taken care of with a resistor external to the LED. Just in parallel.
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[MiggyMan]

Hey, where did you find the bulb holder, the only one i can find is ba9 (althought visibly identical to that one) however the original bulbs are ba7!

[glutamodo]

The bulb holder in the first picture at the top of this thread? Here:

http://www.busdepot.com/details.jsp?partnumber=113957397

[MiggyMan]

ta! \o/

[MiggyMan]

Hey, do you know what the outer diameter of those holders is, can't find the same ones over here in the uk so if i figured it'd be worth trying to find a holder of the same dimensions (since i don't fancy getting them from the us unless i have to )

[MiggyMan]

Hang on.. .captain obvious moment... it'll be the same as the stock ones :p

[MiggyMan]

Got my led bulbs, still waiting for the connectors from the states but i can still play with some of it atm, i've just spent the afternoon setting up the gauge illumination, i went with the led bulbs for these and the only problem i found was that the led bulbs by their nature are far more directional and thus don't work quite as well as bulbs out of the box.

So i found a solution... and that was to paint the inside of my speedo gloss white

This has resulted in a nice strong blue glow (i got blue ones, i was actually a cock up but i decided i liked the blue ones :p) and only took half an hour and a £2.50 pot of gloss white enamel paint

[glutamodo]

Cool! Yeah I know about the directional thing - just look at the before/after photos of my "gels" you can see they really needed to be opacified, dulled, whatever you want to call it.

The blue light for the dash, sounds cool. At least yours is a later type that has two instrument panel bulbs, before the gas gauge was moved there, there was only one. I thought about trying green myself at some point but if it's that much of a pain I'm not sure if I will. Post up a nice "night" photo of your final result sometime if you can.

-Andy

[Fattie]

[glutamodo]

So fattie, are you thanking him or what? He posted that he painted his speedo housing white on 9/30/08 while you posted how you painted yours yellow about 7 weeks later on 11/18/08.

[Fattie]

here I was thinking I actually had an original idea

I'll stay in the late forum where I belong
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[glutamodo]

I think I'd better post an addendum to this thread - In the interim since I did my LED warning conversion, actual reverse-polarity LEDs have become available that are "plug-and-play" and do not require any special bulb-holders or rewiring for the charging,turn signal and oil pressure lights.

This ad: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=768772

And they are mentioned towards the end of this thread, here's a link that joins the thread several pages in:

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3...;start=160

And also, posted in another thread, here's a photo of the "messy" wiring I ended up with on when using those isolated bulbholders. I was asked where I ran the ground to, and that's one of the wires leading to the speedometer mounting screw you see on the right.

-Andy