Help with LEDs for tach and speedo...

[badguy]

I bought a couple 5-LED bulbs since my bulb behind the speedo burned out (honestly officer, i didn't know I was going that fast...).  Anyway, just to see how they worked, I hooked each one up to a 9V battery.  The first one I tried was really bright, but it didn't seem like the four LEDs on the side were lighting up.  Also, the middle LED was getting pretty warm, which I didn't think these were supposed to do.  When I tried the other bulb, all five LEDs lit up, but it was much dimmer. 

The superbrightleds.com folks aren't available on weekends, so I'll call them on Monday to see what I can do, but I'm pretty sure there's a short in the bright bulb causing all the current to run through the middle bulb.  Anyone who's tried this before:  how bright are your bulbs?  I know pictures don't really show a whole lot, but here are a few to give an idea of what I'm talking about. 

These first two show the different bulbs with the camera adjusting to compensate for the different brightness:




These next two show them at the same camera settings, so you can better see the difference in brightness:




I'm going to go ahead and install the dim one in the speedo to see how it looks.  I'm not sure if it's bright enough to light up the gauge, but we'll see. 

[trumpetguy]

Does it look the same if you connect to the GS battery (12V)?  Might want to try that...

[badguy]

Well, I just got back from installing the dimmer one behind my speedometer.  Once installed, it looked pretty much like the pictures that RedShift put up in this post, leading me to believe that the dimmer one is working correctly. 

I'm pretty sure that had I connected the other one to a 12V battery, it would have burned up the bulb, since I can almost guarantee that all the current was being routed through only the one LED in the middle.  Even if it didn't screw up the bulb, it would have been too bright, since the other one got brighter once I had it attached to the 12V battery on the GS.  I also noticed that Egaeus mentioned that one of his bulbs blew the 20A fuse; this might be because the same thing happened to him, and the diode shorted out.  I'm not exactly sure what happens to diodes when they fail (fail to short, or open circuit?) but this wouldn't surprise me.  Thanks for the suggestion, though

I'll post up what I find out from the guys at ...leds.com

[starwalt]

LEDs (diodes that emit light when forward biased) can fail to either state, open or shorted. Open is the preferred state because they don't blow fuses.

In the case of your unlit LEDs in the one bulb, I think the unlit LEDs are shorted causing all the current in the string to pass through the one lit LED - much to its anguish and certain to lead to premature failure.

We could go off on a tangent and discuss LED theory now, but just give the seller a call when they are open.

I hope they don't have a return policy like the software business.   

[badguy]

Starwalt,

Thanks for the knowledge, that's what I thought, but wasn't sure.  I'll give the people a call tomorrow to find out what they think.

-Mike

[Jay_wolf]

I happened to have looked into that and installed it into mine , i saw sum really nice blue ones . 4.99 Uk With P+P
Looks Smart As

Wolfy     

[badguy]

Because I know everyone is dying to know how this turned out, I called superbrightleds.com on Monday and they said they'd send me a replacement the following day.  It arrived in the mail yesterday and worked fine. 

I just wanted to give the company credit for handling this well.  I'd definitely recommend buying through them if you want to replace your bulbs with LEDs.

[genEricStL]

What model bulbs did you get ? I've got blue bulbs in my guages currently , but the LEDs look much more "blue" ... wouldn't matter as much if I didn't have my engine & tail lit with blue LEDs already hehe . The blue incandescants look washed out in comparison 
-Eric

[salad]

What model bulbs did you get ? I've got blue bulbs in my guages currently , but the LEDs look much more "blue" ... wouldn't matter as much if I didn't have my engine & tail lit with blue LEDs already hehe . The blue incandescants look washed out in comparison 
-Eric

http://gstwins.com/gsboard/index.php?topic=23589.msg242846#msg242846

[badguy]

Yeah, what salad said...

they're called the "WLED-x5 LED Wedge Base Bulbs" on their website.

[chefod]

just buy a couple or wedge led bulbs on E-bay, that's what I did, just plug and play, save all that dicking around for the winter,  I think it came to like $12 with shipping, just bite the bullet, you will be glad you did, mine are about twice as bright as they were with the stock bulbs, you can even see it most of the day!!!  I forget what i searched under, but I guarantee you will find them on E-Bay!

[badguy]

just buy a couple or wedge led bulbs on E-bay, that's what I did, just plug and play, save all that dicking around for the winter...

Actually, these are exactly that...no dicking around necessary (unless I guess you get a dud like I did, but I'm sure that's possible with any distributor).  All I had to do was remove the gauges, pull the old bulb out, stick the LED bulb in, and replace the gauges.  And the grand total of the two bulbs plus a 6-LED light bar was $17.45 shipped to my door in three days. 

Anyway, these bulbs are bound to be the same no matter where you get them.  I was just sharing my experience, especially since people usually only take time to badmouth places of business; I was shown good customer service and wanted to let folks know.

-Mike

[genEricStL]

Ordered through of the eBay store so I could use Paypal .. actually , they should be here today . Thanks guys