Rep Power: 260

Hey, Ive just been expemimenting with different LED's just around my car but is having some problems with them lateley.
First, I bought some Eurolite White LED's for my rear L.P. lights, they worked for about 4 months until 1 blew. So I went online to buy a 1luxeon/4LED bulb, after only 3 months, it blew out again.
Im getting sick of having to replace LED bulbs because of the fluctuation of the current all the time. I just ended up buying some PIAA halogen peanut bulbs which are in the mail.

Now, im willing to deal with this LED light thing one more time. I have some LM7812 (12 volt voltage regulator) left over from my indash LED conversion that I can hook up into the wires. Should I go over the trouble of LED's again or see how these PIAA light up?

 
Rep Power: 328

Talk to Gearbox, is is the go to guy for LED's

 
Rep Power: 260

lol where is he?

 
Rep Power: 260

bumbpppbpb?

 
Rep Power: 291

did you PM him?

 
Rep Power: 811

i just saw this. two reasons why they fail. one, crappy design. the hi power leds run way too hot and require a decent size heatsink or the led will just burn up. the problem with the other small 5mm leds is they are wired for 12v, and car gives them 14v which over time will ruin them. now it makes sense to think that okay, i can hook up a 12v regulator and be okay. again, this wont work. most led bulbs only have one single led. that uses maybe 2-3v of power. that means 10v+ will need to be unloaded onto that tiny resistor in the bulb case. i personally would not recommend dissipating more than 1-2v of power with a resistor or it will just get hot and fail, thus blowing the led in the process. the only real way around this is to use as many leds in series as possible to almost match the input voltage, then use a resistor to make up the rest. for example, an ideal red led bulb would have 5 leds hooked in series (2v each) and that will make use of 10v, then you need a resistor to dissipate the remaining 2v. that is assuming you have a 12v regulator hooked up. you could also do it the other way and have 6 leds hooked together for 12v total, then add a resistor to at least 14.4v which is typical alternator output. the problem with this is that although the leds should last a long time, they will not be at full power. this is why i stopped using those bulb altogether and just design my own custom setups. but in alot of place its just not practical. i use bulbs for my plate, parking, and signals cause you have to keep in mind leds dont like heat, so if they are near anything like the headlamp, they will fail much sooner than normal even if wired properly.

when i did my dash leds, i used 5 leds in series, and then a 1/2 watt resistor for each series. i ultimately ended up adding a second resistor to the whole circuit because they were just too bright. this is okay, since the original circuit is already setup properly. the added resistor is just to further dim the leds.

 
Rep Power: 296

I had a problem with leds.....my parking light leds which were the refractor type....one led in the middle and then 5 around it....they would flicker and strobe....so annoying...
I went with piaa bulbs for my 168 parking
the rest I just put cheapo genaric bulbs since my tails are smoked anyways and it wouldn't matter!

 
Rep Power: 260

holy jrock, this is what happened to me. It was kinda cool though cuz I can force someone in the trunk and turn the subs on really loud with the "strobing" LED. party time anyone?

anyways, I guess that the whole LED in the L.P. is just a bad idea unless you rigg up something urself. I have used this idea to already make my cluster LED's, wayy too bring already, but I can still adjust the brightness with the dimmer. Maybe if im not too bored, ill make a strip of LED's and just stick it all the way across the light holders. Thanks Gearr