If you want some sort of heat sink then what are some easy ways to accomplish that? Do you simply need to glue them to some plastic or, God forbid, should you meticulously drill an aluminum plate and use thermal paste?

 

Buy one.
Most of the plug-in style LED bulbs have built in heat-sinks, its only custom projects that need them, such as mounting one of these units in your car
http://www.ledssuperbright.com/30w-l...ower-led-p-226

 

I thought after 27 posts there would be at least one pic of a conversion.

 

my car has nothing but leds front to back and hid hi and lows, i also went threw and sanded my cluster down until it was just a peice of clear plastic and then made my own gauge faces on the computer got them printed up on special paper then used spray anhesive to attatch to the plastic... led lights look so much cleaner

 

^^ blurry phone pic, but what the cluster looks like during the day

^^ wiring up some extra leds i got from autozone

^^ when i was testing out to see the brightness

 

Haven't done anything inside the car, but I'm in the process of changing all exterior lights to LED's. Got the turn, reverse and license plate lights done... brake lights and third brake light on the way. Then on to the side markers and front signals.

 

I wanna see this done, that was my original plan, but after seeing an s13 with it, the brake lights looked STUPID. they weren't filling at all, just little dots of light in the middle. He may have been using the led's that just face one direction, I saw some that face all sides. Considering these bulbs if it doesn't look stupid. Also, has anyone ever painted the backside of the lights chrome? Make it more reflective if anything? I dunno, just a thought.

 

Pics of it installed and lit up?

 

i might do side markers and license plate, but I aint doing brake lights, usually dont look good

 

Been there, done that, looks like trash (referring to tail lights). The only lights that look good w/ LED bulbs are side markers and maybe turn signals, depending on the type of bulb.

Clubsudi: good looking cluster! Post some pics of it installed. I might consider something like that, white faces w/ orange or red starting @ 7k. Where did u get the template?

 

i made the template myself, i dont really know how to post it to where it stayed the right size...ill get a pic up tommorow

 

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-b...8-T.htm#photos
http://www.v-leds.com/Exterior-LED/T...-p7472056.html
http://www.ddmtuning.com/Products/11...-18xPiranhaLED

Where's the heatsinks? There aren't any. And a little copper tab built in doesn't work as a heatsink on even a low powered LED, let alone anything that's high powered which is what you would need for tail/brake, and turn signals. Not to mention all of these bulbs are junk. They don't hit the reflectors and they don't hit enough of the lense to make any decent light.

The right light is a standard 2357 incandescent bulb. The left light is a single Osram 5w high power red LED with a PWM base and reflector cap on top. Keep in mind I said ONE SINGLE LED and it easily oushines the incandescent on the tail light and matches the brightness on brake but gives it a much deeper red color(hard to pick up the color difference since it's from my phone).

 

where do you get this single osram led with reflector?

 

You have a PM Rob. I made a quick video of the lights in action. The third brake light is the factory 1156 incandescent still
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-hVjjSCIls

 

Hey this is my thread!

Don't send him PM's!! SHARE!! lol jk really though where are they? That seems to be working. You may be onto something....

 

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...keywords=CP41B


Have fun!

 

http://www.elef-usa.com/apps/webstore/

I have the Elef-IV 5w. The whole case is aluminum. It's got a proper heat sink and utilizes a PWM base. PWM stands for Pulse Width Modulation which is important in dual intensity LED applications as it modulates the amount of volatge to the LED.

 

those led bulb for tail lights are crap.. well i dunno if they improved over the years but when they first came out where horrible. Just looks poor esp if someone does modernized tail lights and a central light source coming from the middle imo.

 

It's much cheaper to buy the led's seperate and solder them to a board plus it looks 10x better.

 

what about 194 bulbs? I got new cab lights for my pickup because the old ones were getting shitty and they came with nice bright bulbs, but then I got some 5 or 6 bulbs from superbriteleds and they dont seem as bright

my side markers are tinted so I figured some brighter bulbs might be nice for night driving

did you have to do some wiring work to get the signals to blink at the right speed?

 

Hypertek, you're absolutely right. Most of the plug and play bulbs on the market are horrible. These Elef bulbs are almost plug and play and they are the best I've ever seen and experienced. I've spent a good bit of money in the past on PnP LED bulbs from all the top sites and they've all been junk.

Rob, so far I haven't found any 194 style LEDs that are worth a damn. I have found a 1w Philips w5w base bulb that looked promising, but the construction on it ended up being subpar, and had a very poor heatsink. After just 2 minutes of run time at 13.5 volts it was at 100*F. There was a guy over in the UK that used them as parking lights in his Focus and the light eventually had a melt down. Pretty dissapointing coming from Philips. I'm on the same mission though for the markers in my FC and Spectra as well as tag lights for the Spectra. My tail lights don't blink for turn signal so I didn't need to do anything else but tap into the existing wiring. I plan to get some empty bases and solder them onto the Elef's when I get more and do the RX. When I do the front turn signals in the Spectra, I will need to add a load resister in line so I don't get hyperblink since Japanese and Korean manufacturers can't seem to make it easy and just use flashers.

 

i realized after i posted about the turn signals for the FC, I wonder by comparison what temp incandescent bulbs run?
I know I have burned my skin on bulbs in the past

 

Clubaudi that is pretty sick, what kind of paper was it? I could scan them and photoshop em, i got a hp laserjet here but i dunno if it needs ink.

 

if i wasnt broke Id take a chance on those ebay indiglo gauges and try to strip the face off them, than print something on clear plastic sheet and place it in front of those, should be some modern looking gauges

 

I think I'm gunna give those a chance. I'm very weary about buying stuff off ebay but they're cheap. And I wanna go with mostly blue lights and stuff in my car, new stereo deck will illuminate blue. I had a really nice one in my galant but I let it go with the sell dangit....