Rebuilt my LED lightbar (pics)

[VanIsleDSM]

The seal had gone in my lightbar on the spoiler, I could see some corrosion in there and it worked intermittently.. and the LEDs that did work, when they worked, weren't very bright..

The solution was 35 new 2.1V 3500MCD 30degree LEDs, not super brights but decent ones.. with a wider viewing angle than the stockers..

I cut around the top of the lens assembly with a razor blade to break the rest of the seal, and then popped the top off.

I removed the PCB board holding all the LEDS in the lens assembly and cut the wires right at the PCB board so I could work on it off the car.

Then I desoldered the 70 connections in total using solder wick so soak up the old stuff.. I then inserted the 35 new LEDS paying close attention to polarity... this is the longest part. (the desolding and solder removal)

Now solder in your new LEDS and you're good to go.. this goes by pretty quickly if you've handled a soldering iron much, if not it's great practice.. my pic here of my soldering focused on the ground instead, oops.. they're cell phone pics, you get the point though.

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Here's the front with all the new LEDS soldered in.

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Ta-Da.

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And the closeup

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I dig it.. Next up I'm gonna do something about those FUGLY blue reverse lights in there... might try out one of these bad boys..

http://www.rpelectronics.com/English/Content/Items/LXHL-MW1D.asp

should be able to see backing up with that sucker!


and then I'll end up doing a whole tail light LED conversion.. but I haven't quite decided yet how I want to orient them in the housing, I might do something DB9 style with with a 2 LED wide strip of them around the perimeter of the brake light, or maybe civic style just cross hatch evenly spread around.. leaning towards somekind of Austin Martin DB9 look alike I think..

 

[RWKustoms]

Looks good man, I just wish you had a closeup of the stocker to compare it to. I really can't tell if there is a big difference but great job though.

 

[VanIsleDSM]

Thanks. My stocker wasn't working at the time, or I would have... it's definitly ALOT brighter though... comparing the LEDs 1 on 1 on the bench the difference was huge... 3X the viewing angle and 3x the light intensity on the larger angle aswell.. much more luminess.. LED tech has come a ways since 10 years ago.

Not that it's a wicked mod to make your LEDs on your lightbar brighter.. I only did it cause mine weren't working.. and who wouldn't go brighter if you were going to the trouble?

edit: hey I have some extra LEDs I used for replacement, I'll compare it on the bench to the old ones and take a pic tomorrow... shoulda done that I suppose... oh.. and this cost me $9CAD from a local place.

 

[Defiant]

How do those LEDs compare to these?

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[VanIsleDSM]

I think I'd have a little trouble fitting those in my lightbar?

..not too sure what you're getting at

 

[VanIsleDSM]

Well I got some pics of the new LEDS vs the stockers that were in there before... my estimation of 3x more intensity with 3x the illination angle were.. well, quite understated, I'll let the pics do the explaining...


In the first pic you can't even see the light patern of the stocker LED, in the second pic you can see I've moved the stocker LED to half the distance of the new one so you could even tell that it's on... Both LEDS wired to the same power source in parallel, what a difference!

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[Defiant]

I think I'd have a little trouble fitting those in my lightbar?

..not too sure what you're getting at

No, for the backup bulbs.

 

[VanIsleDSM]

oh.. not too sure.. I'll have to test.. but they'll be brighter than the stock bulbs I'm pretty sure.. here's a pic of an echo with regular dome light converted to 1 of these LEDs that's only running at 70% power.

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These are no normal LEDs, they can handle 700mA, notice how wide the intense dispersion pattern is.. and how saturated it remains.. you get those keychain LEDs that are damn bright but they're only 20mA LEDs, the light is intense but only concentrated on a small area, if the beam were cast on a larger angle it would be pretty petty.. now a few of these 700mA bad boys could light up a house.

edit: I noticed these also come in a 1500mA flavour too!!! now.. 50watt/12volt = 4000mA draw for the incandescent, now regular 20mA LEDs are about 10times more efficient at converting electicity into light.. these high power LEDs aren't quite as good.. so lets say 7X more efficient to be really conservative...

so if we simply say for convenience that the incandescent converts electicity into light at a 1:1 ratio we'd have 4000units of light with the 4000mA draw, while the LED will have 11,500 units of light with it's 1500mA draw... so yes.. these should be quite a bit brighter than a 50W incandescent.. which I imagine insn't stock anyway? it's probably 23W maybe?

...This doesn't take into consideration that all the light in the LED is directed through it's lens into a 160degree pattertn.. whereas the incandescent shoots light in every direction, not using the light it produced nearly as effectitely.. this is moreso with brake and signal lights that are filtered into red and amber... when using LEDs already producing the target colour of light, loss in minimal.

 

[Defiant]

Those look great. But then, when I got the halogen backups, white LEDs were still unavailable.
LEDs just might save our power grid.

 

[VanIsleDSM]

Then you can pay us back for all the power you borrowed.. hah