i am looking for replacement brake light bulbs.. either regular lights or led's

please advise

 

ares is working at it.

 

Wonder what happens if we drop in an HID bulb? Scary. Light up the town red!

Since the brake light bulbs are dual filament design (dual brightness), making the bulbs is a bit more challenging than turn signals because we need to judge the safety and brighness for these dual stage bulbs.

:-/ Someday.... but I'm lazy.

 

yeah; their are extremely strict laws on how bright as related to surface area ect ect.

there is an assembly out there that will do what you want; I have no clue how much; probably in the neighborhood of 1-200$ per peice(need 2). but the genious's that made it designed it with a 2" diameter. meaning you gotta open the housing and custom fit the thing in there. cant just pop it in.

I know no LED bulb right now will come close. only way I see of having a shot at it is with a 3 or 5watt luxeon as the "bright" mode. then you get to deal with a microchip controlling the pulse current just to get a somewhat managable heat(which will still be a hurdle to tackle).

HID wont work; cause it has to "warm up". no good for the bright mode. ignoring the fact that they are just too bright anyway. assuming the wiring could handle it; a higher wattage(I think its 5 and 29) would do the trick as I mentioned in the PM. but to my knowledge; no such bulb exists.

 

thanks ares

 

what about brighter reverse light bulbs. with my tints at night its hard to see much of anything. coming from an explorer, which lit up everything behind me like none other, its a hard change.

 

Amen to this, I can't see **** when I'm back up.

 

YES! Ares and I can use the same idea for turnsignals and make reverse signal bulbs since they're the same thing.

It would be nice to use the "stars" because they have a heatsink. However, this limits the # of Luxeons to 1. I mini-cluster of Luxeons would be nice, but expensive. Someday, I'll do "advanced" Luxeon lighting (for myself, of course). Whenever I have all the show stuff put on ($$, kit 'n wheels).

Anyhow, has anyone tried filing/sanding epoxy material?

-Phuong

 

in regards to brighter reverse lights, you can maybe do this: ????
make the brake lights also work as a turn signal. and then rewire the stock turn signal (bumper lenses) in one huge reverse light. so basically when you signal then the taillight will blink. and when you reverse the entire rear bumper lenses will light up. just an idea.

 

First, use a 555 timer and FET as I suggested in the other thread, that will help with heat dissipation significantly.

Second, getting the low/high settings is fairly easy. Power wire coming in has a resistor on it, calculated for a high brightness level. A second piece is in series between the first resistor and LED...this "piece" is a parallel combo of a resistor and a FET. The second resistor is calculated so that it + the first resistor gives the required current for a low brightness. The FET is controlled by the wire on the brake pedal.

Let me see if I can draw it using ASCII...

R1+R2= resistance for a low brightness.
R1=resistance for a high brightness.
Turn FET on with brake pedal wire.
Power whole shebang with brake light wire.

 

makes sense.

I have managed to fit 5luxeons including a star into the required space limits.

my initial thoughts would be to keep the 4 1watt luxeons as the low level lights. the central star would be bumped to a 5w LED instead of a 1watt that the turn signal prototype uses.

not too difficult. but a bit of setup and trial and error to make it pretty and producable in a reasonable length of time.

the biggest hurdle I see is price. 200-250$ for a set of bulbs. that is the main point that kind of limits the effort in them. theyd have a very limited market.

for backup lights; Id probably forgo the 4 1watt LEDs(illuminating the housing isnt really a concern) and keep the single 5w star; and still itd be 100-120$ for a set.

 

this will do the trick; inside ring for low light; outside for high.

90$ for inside ring. not sure how much for the outer ring; probably 150-200. so thats only about 300 per light. oh. and the people behind you will be legally blind when you stop; so it might not be so good.

 

i don't mind!!!!

ares..get ready to place my order for ur bulbs.....

 

hahahah I was just kidding !!!

the last part to that is youd have to open the tail light; which you cant do. easily. I dont know if the baking thing works on the tail light; wont fit in my oven.