hey guys.
i just got my 2010 FS catolog. i see they now got the led board for my 30 tail light.
does anybody think its worth it to put it in my housing. i had alot of problems getting my brake light and tail light to work. they work fine now. but i`m wondeing if i should replace the bulbs with led`s
has anybody done it yet????

"If it ain't broke...don't fix it".

If your brake light and your tail light are both working fine I would leave them alone.

thanks skip.
i guess i`ll leave well enough alone. as long as it don`t give me any more problems.

Maybe they don't have it on their on-line catalog yet but all the LEDs I saw were 12 volt.

its in the new 2010 catolog. 6v led for the 26 to 30 tail light. the FS doesn`t update thier wed site to offen. it even has 2 white led`s for the lic. plate light. cost 65$.
i was just wondering if anybody tried it yet. but i`m going to hold off getting it. my tail,brake light works. (this week) LOL

My experience with 6V LED bulbs was gained from buying THESE. A waste of money. They weren't any brighter than the incandescent bulbs and didn't work well anyway.

thanks tiny
i seen those at swap meets and i just didn`t like the way they looked. they looked like something somebody made in there workshop.

I purchased a 12 volt bulb replacements to try out and it was horrible. I have seen the circuit boards with many LEDs on them that are replacements for our cars and they might be better as there is no requirement for reflected light. But i have many more things to do on the car that $65 can take up if my light still works.

The LED arrays that we are still seeing pushed at us at those reduculus prices are really old technology. In the 60’s LED were pretty much limited to experimentel use. The early ones in the mid 60’s cost in the neighborhood of hundreds of dollars. By the end of the decade the technology had advanced far enough that it was commercialy practicle to use them as panel indicator lights replacing the incondecent and neon bulbs. But they weren’t bright enough yet to light up a room. By the time the 70’s rolled around LEDs had developed to the point that they were seen everywhere, they were dirt cheap and they were red. I quote this from a paper posted to the internet: “The development of LED technology has caused their efficiency and light output to increase exponentially, with a doubling occurring about every 36 months since the 1960s”
Today the LED is used by just about every automobile and truck manufacturer, they are the light in many of the night time signs and marquees replacing neon for the most part.

The LED of today is BRIGHT! I’ve noticed the last year or so that the hardware store shelves are being flooded with dozens of these new single element High Intensity LED flashlights. I looked at one the other day that claimed an output of 180 lumens from a single element, the thing was even mounted in a heat sink it was sucking up so much juice. With elements that are putting out that much light there is no need for the arrays that they have been trying to sell us for the past decade. As was mentioned in Tiny’s link, the LED respond faster where an incandescent filament has to heat up, they last forever, it only takes less than 4v to fire them off and they can take as much beating as you and your Stovebolt can dish out. And they are only a few bucks right now, and as they catch on the prices are going to drop like a rock. All you need to do to use them with your 6v or 12v system is to use a dropping resistor in series with the bulb and you got your bright stop or turn signal in a compact inexpensive package.
I think it’s only a matter of time before we see the new high intensity LED replacements being offered. You could go to Costco and pick up two of the 160 lumen single flashlights for $20 and take the bulb and socket out to experiment with.
A few years ago before the high intensity elements were developed, I made up LED turn indicators for the bedroll on my ’50 pickup truck. I used the LED array from those cheapo 2/$3.99 flashlights that Harbor Freight and the auto stores were selling in the blister packs. Here, take a look: http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/122737145/original
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/electrical&page=3
I’m probably going to try some of the high output elements one of these days.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Denny, your application for LEDS is ideal. the problem is that LEDS are still unidirectional in their beam and when placed in an automotive lamp housing that has a reflector at the back, can't work well.

Denny
Great work

Denny
That idea certainly works well and the LED wont overload the electrical system.
Tony

That’s the lens part Shawn, most of the high intensity LED’s are available with many different “lens” housings. They are commonly about 45° but lenses can be had anywhere from 15° to 140° now days. The new ones are being used everywhere now, lighting for pathways, area lighting, all the new stop/traffic control lights are using them, etc.

In my album you can see a picture of the red lens prismatic diffuser that I used on mine. I just went to the local Wal-Mart and grabbed a few cheap flat replacement tail light lenses and cut out some coin blanks with a hole saw to fit my housing. In my experiment the elements are buried pretty deep in the housing but if I were making them to use I would probably use something like a beehive lens with the entire element exposed.

No they certainly won’t overload your system Tony, and that can be a problem used in a turn signal circuit. The flashers depend on a certain amount of current to break the circuit. The weaker LED’s don’t draw as much current as the incandescent bulbs and won’t trigger some flashers. I’ve seen the new individual high intensity LED’s up to 5w, that’s getting close to drawing one full amp of current but that still doesn’t come close to the bright side of an 1154 bulb which will pull around 2 1/2 amp or 16w.
I haven’t been able to dig up much on the actual luminosity of the LED, in fact that info doesn’t exactly jump out at you when you whether you are talking LED or incandescent. The terms Candlepower-Lumen-Watts all get jumbled up in a nasty soup or something like a never ending loop and I’m not nuts about chasing my tail so I’m not the one to sort it out. I just know what I see and the high intensity LED’s will blind you if you get hit straight on with one and they’re doing it on a lot less power than the old miniature light bulbs used and they are the wave of the future.

Here’s a basic tutorial on LED’s that someone with a little experimenter blood in them might find interesting. There is a lifetime of reading on the subject if one really wants to get into it.

The why question always comes up when I discuss this. When you make the comparison of quality, life span, durability, efficiency, continued future size reduction the LED is clearly the winner. When you can find them, NOS 6v miniature bulbs are bringing a big buck now days and the foreign made replacements do not impress me.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Interesting, i did not know they were getting up to the 140 deg. rage on lenses. I did see some for street lighting the other day, but did not think twice about the lens, other than it was huge. i did notice the heat sinks on the high powered ones.

As for the flasher issue, it is best to move to an electronic one rather than the old bimetallic/heater ones we have used in the past. If you need a 6V unit, you could probably pick up a motorcycle one and wire it in.

Now onto lighting power, yes, the lumen/candlepower/watts mess is a real pain. i was in Wal-Mart the other day and saw some LED replacements for a ceiling fixture we have. It claimed to be equivalent to an 42W bulb, but on closer look, it only emitted something like 23 lumens. a similar CFL until was around 240 lumens, and the original 50W halogen was not rated, but must be a heck of a lot more.

If you are using LED as a turn signal light on the older style flasher can put a resister between the LED terminals (parrellel) this will put enough load on the can to slow it down. I am not sure of what value resistor but think 47 ohms would be a good start.
The easier method would be the newer electronic can if they are available in 6 volt.
Tony

Yep that you could do Tony, that is, add another load resistor in parallel.

Shawn that is the reason I did didn't want to get involved in a discussion on candela-lumen-watts. Luminosity is the total measurement of the energy source using a spherical detection space and candela is a directional measurement. This really gets confusing for me and that’s why I said all I care about is what it looks like to me, i.e. to bright, to dim or just right. I’ve read where Candlepower is really looked upon as an antiquated term now days.

Even though I’ve done some experimenting with the LED lighting, all in all I’ll probably keep on using the replacement bulbs that the vendors are supplying to us, even though as one of our esteemed members so often puts it, they are “cheapo repops from the Orient”.

When the LED’s prices come down and they start using the newer smaller more powerful LED’s I’ll most likely switch over to them.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL