feuss2

iTrader: (1)

I did this LED conversion for my motorcycle:

http://www.sca40.com/led/

And thought it would be really cool do something simliar for the TSX and take the shape the the BMW led tail lights have and mount them in the round lense cutouts on the tsx:



Anyone got some lenses to experiment on???

CCColtsicehockey

nope but why not try on yours. also sometimes you can find extra taillights on ebay for like50 or 60

xenonhid

Looks Promising! If you did that for your ducati, than it looks like its not too difficult to create the tail light pattern for the TSX tail lights! Is that your own personal website or business? Cant really donate mine b/c Its my only mode of transportation . If you post pics of successful LED mod then count me in for this MOD! Keep us updated!

:gheyfight:

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

I dont think it would be difficult at all... I can probably draw up the drill pattern in a few minutes, etc, just really need to open up one of each type of lense and make sure there's not going to be any complications... Just reluctant to do that to my own lenses because I have to use my care almost dialy.

I could buy something on ebay, but if someone has some sitting around, even if they are badly scratched or a little broken, that would still be a huge help.

I think that pattern in the bmw could be worked into the shape of those round cutouts.

The other idea I had was to make the acura A in the squared off circle in each tail lense.

Let me know if you have any others!

ILoveMyHonda

oh man you red my mind I'm currently working on something very similar on my tsx but i need spares too. Man it looks like you are just the guy I am looking for for this question.......SO after runnin the wires in parallel and series. How did you install the resistors to have running and brake lights. I am so curious to know.

I plan on having a cicular cutout and use a dremel to cut out "dowel" like pits for the LED's to have that sunk in look like the G35. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Good work on the bike man

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

Once you make your series/parallel combo of LED's, you're going to want your running light resistor to allow about 10ma through each branch (so for example 5 branches in parallel = 50ma through your resistor) and then for the brighter setting you want to push that up to about 25ma per branch... this way you see the difference in brightness between the two.

You may even want to make your running light even less. When I did that for the bike, I played around with a potentiometer until i got results I liked the look of, then measured what it was set to and bought the fixed resistors closest in value.

Trick is with the higher setting, that you need to select a resistor that in parallel with the one for the running light will give you the right current... If this doesnt make too much sense, let me know and I'll put up a sample calculation.

Btw, are you a little p!$$ed when you saw the 06 accords and civics with LED tail lights!!!

iNteGraz92

good luck feus, and gj on the bike conversion

sathiele

I am guessing this is too expensive, but in case you haven't seen it...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ACURA...14992025QQrdZ1

and

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ACURA...13279534QQrdZ1

HoRRo

Whoa, those vendors are way overpriced considering I can pickup a full pair of TSX headlight housings for about $150usd.

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, seems a little ridiculous. I might just either wait to take mine apart 'til i have some time to be without a tail light, OR, pick up something cheap on ebay and sell the ones on my car for about the purchase price. Or maybe just try to do a swap with a local junkyard and make it more like a core charge....

slobeatz

Here's what I was thinking I might try and do.



The red dots will turn on with the parking lights (minus the turn signal) and the black when braking.

CCColtsicehockey

I say put in a relay and make ia all light up when you brake

Xtremespeed2102

hmmm id do rings around all 3
and if ure goin for it make the turn signal yellow

sathiele

I would think you might want to have both circles full of LEDs when the lights are on, and then have them all get brighter with the brake. You wouldn't need quite as many LEDs as in the above image though, I wouldn't think...but I don't know how detailed your picture is, if that is the number of LEDs you're planning on having or not. As long as they're pretty bright, you don't need too many.
G35 - only 18 for each light
http://www.brianv.net/g35/IMG_2478.JPG
I would say maybe like 10 for each of the two circles and then whatever for the turn signals.

I'm really glad someone is looking into this. I won't have a tsx until 2007, but if I do get it, I would DEFINITELY do this mod. Good luck, feuss2.

sathiele

good luck to feuss2, and anyone else attempting this mod, that is. just noticed the design was from slobeatz.

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

I had another interesting idea... a little curved shape going across the bottom of the lense, and when you hit the brakes, the rest lights up to look like an eye! do you think that would get the attention of the guy behind you???

If you are replacing a bulb with 2 filaments, you can either do a dim/bright setup wtih a bank of LED's or have your LED's always bring and turn on another bank when the second filament would've lit. So much opportunity for fun here!

If anyone takes apart a stock lense, can you post the ID of the circuilar areas?

HoRRo

I would probably laugh if I saw that on a TSX, and girls seeing that would probably say "awww, it's so cute". So if you want that look, to each their own.

slobeatz

Alrights, so the outer ring on the inside brake light is a no-go. looking at the assembly, the cup tapers to one edge which would make it impossible to fit LEDs in. I think I may just have the inner brake light be a smaller full circle that is always on and have the entire outer brake light come on when I brake. I also noticed that the lexus RX330 has some circle lenses that may fit into ours.

HoRRo

I'm also curious, in regards to the rear signals, since the housing is red, if you got some yellow LEDs, would that make it orange when lit up? *hopeful*

Xtremespeed2102

hmm i wonder if any one around by me crashed a TSX and how much they would let go of thier tailights for...

ILoveMyHonda

Hey thanks for the details, it's appreciated. I'm a lil confused but I think I get the jist of it. But a sample calculation would be helpful thanks!

And yes I am pissed about a the accord with LED's I was so hoping the '06 TSX was gonna have led's so I would do a tail light swap. But forget it now

Also i was examining my tail lights yester day and it appears that the lens is heat welded together. I tried various ways to see if I could seperate the lens, but it looks like the only way to do that would be to dremel it along the seams.

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

basically, you can buy whatever led you wish. there are some 10mm's out there
that you can make a much brighter turn signal with now, that have really
dropped in price since i first did this.... however, the 5mm's just look cool
and the lens is very evenly lit!

you will find that you can get some pretty bright led's for about 45-50cents or less
in any major online catalog like digikey. also check out superbrightleds.com

the mfgr will tell you the voltage drop across each... something like 2.1V

figure you electrical system will run around 13.8v with the engine running so it
can charge your 12v battery!

if you have 6 in series, you have a voltage drop of 12.6V across the diodes, and
therefore 1.2V across the resistor. so use ohm's law: V=I*R and select your
resistors accordingly. remember that LED's are not resistive loads. yes they
consume power, but they are diodes and will tend to conduct as much current
through them as the rest of the circuit demands. no current limiting resistors
will make your array extremely bright, but will cut the life expectancy down to
about 5 or 10 seconds.

you probably want to play it safe and run 25mA through EACH led when the brake
is applied to be nice and bright, since most of those led's are good for about
30mA peak. your running light will have to draw a bit less current in order
for your to notice a good transition between running and brake.

the array is wired as a big series-parallel circuit. the 90 led version is made
of 15 banks of 6 (wired in series) all in parallel. so the max current is
150mA, or .150A--that's the number you use in the formula above.

Have fun, and send me some pics/info if you compile anything!

nstag8r

If anyone gets one of these made and would like to make a second one I'd be VERY interested.

Xtremespeed2102

question about superbright LEDs in general.
im looking to make a bike light to use at night. right now i have a H1 bulb in there and its melting everything to pieces (well really a blob of plastic since most of it is made out of acryllic and ABS plastic). plus it draws too much current and kills my batteries VERY quickly.
so before i melt the entire housing i was thinking of maybe using some LEDs, how bright do these guys get? i have a reflector (from the light). from the looks of it i can get about 5 leds in the middle and i can make an array. if i get really fancy i could probably fit more.

i think a few of the lights on ebay were 100,000 mcd but most were 10,000.
have any suggestions where i can get some for a decent price... (30 bucks for a set of 30 or 50 is a bit steep, yes thats including shipping.)

oh, right now i have a cateye 5 led light, i was thinking of making something simliar to thier triple beam light with highpowered LEDs but i cant find any...
sorry this is so long, but i figured i might ask since you guys have been searching LEDs longer.

thanks again

HoRRo

http://www.ledshoppe.com/Product/led/LE2001.htm

18000mcd 10mm White LED x 20pcs for $8.00

Although, you could fork out $7.00, just slap one of these on your head and call it a day. http://www.ledshoppe.com/Product/ledp/LP2006.htm

ledshoppe has really inexpensive items and apparently free shipping.

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

I do not suggest buying WHITE led's. What is the reason for doing this? Unless you are replacing your backup light???

You can't make a light bulb that emits 1 color only. So white light bulbs are used behind RED filters in the tail lights.

A FILTER is something that lets a certain color PASS and ABSORBS the rest. So out of 18000mcd in that white LED, only a fraction of that is red light.

* * * TAIL LIGHT LENSES DO NOT CHANGE WHITE LIGHT TO RED LIGHT * * *

That said, red light goes through a red filter with almost no loss at all!

When I built this tail light insert for my motorcycle:



The array was no dimmer once I put the stock tail light lens on. This may be difficult to tell because you can't take a picture of the array lit up head on.

Secondly, mcd rating is not the only way to compare 2 LED's. If you take 2 or more 2.1V red LED's that are each tested at 25ma they could have very different mcd ratings! Ever wondered why? Its's not because one is crappy or a rip-off, etc... its about * * * VIEWING ANGLE * * *

(There is this other issue of overdriving LED's -- forcing too much current through them to get a higher mcd rating. Always look at the current the mcd rating was given at. Typically you dont want more that 20-25ma going through an LED continuously. Peak ratings are usually around 30. ebay sellers are notorious for advertising the mcd rating at the highest possibly current. You dont want to design anything you want to last a long time this way!)

LED's are rated at a particular brightness within a specified viewing angle. The LED's you linked to above have a viewing angle of 10 degrees! Of course if you focus the light energy in to a narrow beam you get a high rating! Ever used a magnifying glass to focus sunlight and light a peice of paper of fire??? However, once you spread out the beam, the average mcd rating over the range is going to drop--however, this means more people can see your signal easier too!!!. You can see that very clearly in this table:


I would recommend something with a little bit more than a 10 degree viewing angle for driving applications. If you need to jack up your mcd rating, that's where you use more LED's!



Does anyone have any spare tail light lenses to experiment with??? I would gladly take something broken so long as I could get a few good measurements out of it!!!

Xtremespeed2102

sweet, head things annoy me after a while. gotta run wires and batteries, on the handle bars its not bad... i just need to try n figure out how big of an array do i need

Xtremespeed2102

hmmm some good information in there, but im not venturing to them on my tail lights.... yet that is. right now for my mtn bike im looking for LEDs to make a head light, that doesnt go on my head. i have a pretty big housing for it, i wanna say about 6 inch in diameter with a nice sized reflector, i wasnt sure about the MCD rating, but i knew about the viewing angle, which sorta bugged me, but i assumed since i was going to focus them into the reflector it would be brighter?

any suggestions? ill post pictures maybe this weekend, or in another week after finals and i head home for good.

Zoopa

Doesn't anyone make a LED replacements for standard incandescent brake lights for the tail light housing? I seem to remember seeing these in my local Murrays auto parts store.

You wouldn't get the same LED pattern as the TL, but you would at least get the quick response time from an LED, and it would be a lot quicker to install.

HoRRo

People have already done that with LEDs from:

http://www.superbrightleds.com/led_prods.htm

Zoopa

I got this from the Sylvania website:

http://www.sylvania.com/ConsumerProd...D/HowtoGet.htm

Presently, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) use LEDs in interior lighting applications (dash, radio and other places), CHMSLs (3rd brake light) and rear combination systems (brake and sigal combinations). Soon, the SYLVANIA standardized LED bulb will be designed into vehicles.

As for LED replacements for standard incandescent brake lights, reverse lights and interior lights, check back soon because we have new products being developed as legal replacements.

LED lights for use as replacements for standard incandescent lights are available from other suppliers. Most of these products, though, do not meet performance requirements. Because the light distribution from an LED source is very different from an incandescent light, it is very difficult to use an LED replacement while maintaining the required system light output.

CCColtsicehockey

I know you are not looking to pay for the taillights but here is ony really cheap.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/LEFT-...19017479QQrdZ1

97AcuraCL

20 bucks aint bad to practice on it. and if it comes out well you can leave it on your car and sell yours online

97AcuraCL

how we doin on this?

97AcuraCL

DIY LED tails on this IS300-- can't undrestand a damn thing he's saying but i figure i'd share..

http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

97AcuraCL

so how do lights like these work without increasing any of the stock wiring/power?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Scion...QQcmdZViewItem

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

OK! Finally bought a tail light off eBay! Will hopefully see it in the next week or so. In the mean time, that gives me some time to round up the parts and decide on the final design.....

Any votes on the BMW stlye rectangle with rounded sides pattern (I think that would fit nice in a round cutout) vs. the Acura emblem in LED's???

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

For anyone intersted....

http://metku.net/index.html?sect=vie...calc/index_eng

use the series calculator and 13.8V for your input...

if you want 1 resistor instead of putting a bunch of braches in parallel...

add the power ratings together

and the equivalent resistor:

R = (Resistance Calculated in Series LED Calculation) / (Number of branches in Parallel)

CCColtsicehockey

what if you did a circle inside a cirlce.

feuss2

iTrader: (1)

That would probably be pretty slick as well... I keep seeing that suggested. Is there a car that has that already that people are intersted in immitating?