supra tail light swap for the victory.

 

Excellent. I can stop researching places to source the stuff to do this myself. lol.

 

A small price to pay for valuable information, especially if you factor in getting the taillights 2+ weeks earlier

 

i would luv to get in on this if it happends!

 

Thats great news, I still have my lights boxed up ready to ship.. Keep us posted, just waiting on an address to send these's babies out!!

 

So Heath... when is this going to start happening?

Seems like all you guys need is to know what vendor was building the PCB's, what LED's to put on the PCBs, and to find someone to make the diffuser rings?

Note, diffuser rings are the following dimensions:
80mm OD x 60mm ID x .25in thick in Frosted White
75mm OD x 55mm ID x .25in thick in Frosted White

After that the rest of this is relatively easy I think. Do et!

 

Well I'm actually working with Tom on this (hence the lease of the 'design' ). But we have been talking about a possible v3.0 redesign with brighter LED's to increase the total brightness.

 

Thank you!! A little birdie (me) keeps harping about this. Would dramatically improve the product. Fantastic design yet less than desirable brightness. My rule of thumb - you can't be too bright!

 

Its really hard to find a led that will be bright behind a diffuser that's why I questioned it in the original thread that theorie made.

 

This is the reason why I sold mine, I was the 3rd one to get a set and I love the design but was not bright enough for me so I sold it.

If you can make this brighter I will be in for another set.

 

Actually this is not difficult at all with today's SMT LEDs. For pennies more, they make LEDs that would work which produce three times the light output.

 

Doh, I haven't even received my lights back from Theorie yet and now people are saying they won't be bright enough. I was worried about that. Would it be hard to upgrade the LEDs on the original version or would you need to start from scratch?

 

Well I did keep mine FWIW. They are just bright enough IMO for daylight use and are plenty bright at night. If I am correct Tom uses 4,000 or so MCD units and I have suggested he use the 12,000 MCD ones which are not much more per unit. These would make the assemblies perfect IMO.

As they are now I think the improved look of the units outweighs the lack of brightness so I decided to keep them. Had my wife drive behind me to see if she could see the brakes in sunlight and she could so that is good.

Summary - great aesthetic improvement and okay brightness. Fantastic product with 3x brighter lights.

 

If you can find me smd's that put out enough lm for a taillight and is reasonably priced I will buy them and bow down to you

 

Glad to help out. Your best (but not only source) is OSRAM:

http://catalog.osram-os.com/catalogu...00028b00010023

OSRAM makes the led units for Audi and many others. Click on the LED section and then use the search function to find LEDs that fit your criteria. For example, I put in "12,000 or above MCD - luminous intensity" and red in the search and got 40+ pages of results. My advice is to do a little searching and then to call OSRAM and have them hook you up with a distributor in the US that could then help you with your needs.

There are a bunch of red and amber SMT LEDs that are above 10,000 MCDs in brightness which I calculate would be ideal for this application. If you find some that are rated in lumens, that is roughly the equivalent of 15 or so lumens so just pick something that is that or greater.

Tom's approach to this was to use rings with a bunch of SMT (sometimes called SMD) LEDs of about 4,000 or so MCDs on them. I would highly recommend you go with anything above the 10,000 MCD or above range with this approach and with a viewing angle of at least 120 degrees. I think you will be very pleased with the results.

Finally, to purchase them, DIGIKEY is a great source:

http://www.digikey.com/?curr=USD

They sell OSRAM and a bunch of other brands too. One of the OSRAM units I just checked on was about 50 cents if you purchase in bulk and about $1 if you need just a few which you would for your taillights. And this was for a 12,000 mcd red unit. The price range per LED seems to be 25 cents per unit to a little over one dollar.

 

I have looked through osram and the best I could find only put out 2800 mcd which isn't close enough, cree makes plcc's that are in the 3800 range but still not bright enough. Im pretty sure that why you don't see smd's in today's tail lights but rather lumileds instead.

 

DO IT!!!

I hope this happens soon. I like the look and an update to brighter LED sounds great.

Start a list and throw me on.

 

This might be too soon to ask but will there be a kit for sale or will it have to be modded through SBGarage? Some people might find it more convenient to do it themselves rather than waiting weeks if not months for their lights to come back..

 

When I get a few moments, I'll link you to the units I found. They are all above 12,000 mcd.

 

Okay, so I did a quick search of the OSRAM website. I searched for "RED" leds with a "Luminous Intensity" of greater than 9,800. There are numerous results, but not all interestingly meet the criteria - must be a website bug. So, searching thru the 48 pages of results, there are about one dozen that fit the criteria or at least that I found before not going any further thru the 48 pages. Here is a good candidate, a 9,900 mcd 120 degree red one:

http://catalog.osram-os.com/catalogu...0171dc00ec003a

These would double to triple the brightness of the current SBG lights so they are a good choice. You could go crazy and get some that would be 10X as bright but that is way overkill but they are available. Anyway, you can then order them from Digikey here:

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/dk...5AP-BZCZ-1-1-Z

They work out to a dollar per unit. I've not looked at the number you'd need but assuming it's around 30 or so per side, they cost $1 per unit for a total of $60.

Just for grins, you could use something like this:

http://ledsupply.com/k2.php

These put out 75 lumens which is way overkill and will set you back about $5 per unit so they're pricey. I know because I used these for my 99 spec turn signal retrofits

Hope this helps.

 

Another note. Found a bunch of manufacturers that make smd led rings:

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/smd-...-lighting.html

These come in all sizes. Not sure about the brightness, but with a little research you could figure that out. If some come bright enough, this would be the way to go as it would make the job very easy for sure.

 

My driver wont be able to power those I need something around 70mA I think im going to have to stick with lumileds they are sae and ece certified.

 

No kidding... if you could find rings of the correct size and brightness, it would be a joke to covert a set of tails

 

China led's burn out in a few months so you would be replacing them a lot.

I'm going with lumileds and soldering them to a perf board, i am also going to run just rings with a pwm and no diffuser i like the single led look.

 

Which LumiLeds? The automotive series will be wicked bright and are a good choice. Where are you purchasing them from?