Please don't laugh or throw rocks. I don't understand electronics beyond the basics.

I've seen the LED (light emitting diodes) lights on eBay advertised mainly for import guys. The guys on there are charging an arm and a leg for these things. Now, those guys can do whatever they want with them, I want to replace my dim dash lights with LEDs.

I was wondering how these can be hooked up into a vehicle's system. I remember blowing them up as a little kid when I hooked an LED up to a smaller battery, like a 9 volt or something. I thought I could solder 'em into the OEM style dash light bulb holders, would this work, or do I need a resistor, too?

Confused in Cali
-Scott

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Scott - waywardgarage.com
Why is the rum always gone?

You can't solder most LEDs directly in because they will draw too much current. Maybe try a potentiometer of 1kOhm resistance and vary it until you get the right amount of light out of the LED (hook across your battery terminals for test). You'll probably need about 330 Ohms, but maybe as little as 100 Ohms or as much as 1000. I believe companies make LED kits for dash lights. If you buy LEDs from Radio Shack or some place like that, there will be many different luminosities and most will be too dim. You get what you pay for...

You might try searching "Mopar light kits" or "upgrades" or the like, as I think Dan Stern has a small business selling this stuff.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... 2455316699

So would these work in our dashes?

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Scott - waywardgarage.com
Why is the rum always gone?

Those look like the hot ticket to me. I think the stock bulbs were 158, which cross over - might want to check that...

Might be a good idea to order 2 or so and see if they illuminate in the way you want (focused bulbs...), then order more?

Let us know how this flies, since these are likely a great upgrade for the old Mopes!

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

They're similar to what you want; but, may not illuminate the dash well. Dash lighting (for the earlier cars) relied on the side illumination provided by the filament. LED's tend to illuminate in a limited forward looking conical region only around 20-50 degrees width. You'll want to experiment to see if they do what you expect.

If you use LED's in a 12V system, you will definitely need a voltage drop resistor. How much resistance you'll need will depend upon the specific LED's you use... Different colors and compositions have differing voltage requirements.

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My truck is a Frankenstein creation
Built from the dead carcasses of others
And brought BACK TO LIFE!

I wanted to wire in an LED for my electric fan so I would know when it was on and it only worked for about twenty seconds before it was dead, so you need a resistor. I got a keychain mag-light that uses and LED bulb today and took out the bulb and it looks like even for a 1.5 volt battery it has two little resistors, but then again I'm comparing a flashlight to car wiring.....

I'm assuming your car is old and if you're thinking of placing the LED's in then I would just like to give a suggestion. The LED's will be out of site in you're application(unless you have an 80's Slant, then you might have a backlit dash, I don't really know the full extent of vehickles out side of the Dart /valient/volare line that had slants). If you have a type a dash I'm assuming you have where, like it's been said before, the side of the lamps light it up, the LED's won't provide much of an upgrade since the normal Dash-lights on high setting give more than enough light, the only advantage of an LED will be it's color, it'll look custom. I would suggest trying to get regular light bulbs with color shades on them or painted on, you would have to be careful to not have something too dark, but it would be much easier to do than hooking up resistors to run your dashlights as LEDs. If you have a back-lit dash though then the LEDs might help....

There is one upgrade for my headlights that I was thinking maybe someday..... long time from now Sunday, that I might want to attempt(though completion would be unlikely)

Sealed headlight bulbs are slowly going the way of the dinosaurs and I was thinking, what if a Jeep's round headlights could be fitted to work in my car? I'm assuming that the new Jeeps don't have sealed lights so if the headlights fit I could be very happy thirty years from now when my car's sixty and I have to find sealed lights. It seems as though the main requirements would be a beefed up headlight wiring scheme. Wierd thought, but it might work...

A typical LED has a 1-2volt drop at a handful of milliamps draw of current. If you didn't want to use resistors, you can wire several LEDs in series and place 12v across the set. Depending on the specific LED you can do about 6 or so in series and be safe at 12v. Of course, if you want to use the original sockets to hold them in place you will have to modify them so that they don't touch the contacts on the pcb. You can, however, once you have them wired in series, take one end to ground, and the other end to the harness wire feeding the original dash lights.

This won't do what you want. LEDs shine light in a very tight beam in ONE direction, not in all directions like a filament bulb. The dash lighting in our cars works by diffusion, that is, it bounces the light off the back of the gauges and the white-painted (this is why) instrument panel housing to light around the edges of the gauges. You'll wind up with DIMMER gauges if you put in LEDs.

But you can get better gauge lighting, no problem. First off, make all the baseline stuff work right. Pull the headlamp switch and clean the dash light rheostat or replace the switch assembly...these get crapped up with dirt and corrosion over the years. Remove the IP and use a pencil eraser to clean the circuit board where the dash light sockets twist in, and use the eraser to clean the little contact ears on the sockets themselves.

Stock bulbs are dim. You have to be careful about which bulbs you run, because it's easy to melt the blue plastic diffusers. If, however, you *remove* the blue plastic diffusers (just snap 'em off) your options grow. A lot. You can use a new 6w Krypton-Xenon filled bulb or a 5W halogen that's a direct swap for the originals, together with the new-type blue, amber or green silicone bulb sleeve that fits right on the bulb and will NOT melt. Or you can use a bulb called WY5W which is an amber bulb that will make the gauges light up orange instead of greenish. All these options will give you a great deal more light.

How do I know all this stuff? My employer's the source for all these special bulbs and a whole bunch of others I'm not writing about here. Hit www.candlepowerinc.com and send an inquiry. Special deals for Mopar owners.

Don't do it. The Jeep Liberty's headlamps are garbage. They look pretty, but their performance is pathetic. Narrow, short-range beam, way too much upward stray light (=backglare in bad weather).

Hit www.danielsternlighting.com , better replaceable-bulb headlights don't require major surgery.

You will always be able to find sealed beams to fit your car. They are still VERY popular in the trucking and bus industries, and remember that ALL North American vehicles sold between 1940 and 1983 were required to have them, and they're built to standard dimensions, so they're not going off the market any time soon. That doesn't mean you have to settle for their "performance", though.

Final note, even if you don't read the site, DON'T buy the cruddy "diamond cut" crud or blue bulbs.

Whoa! A canadian supplier! Cool!

Would a Jeep TJ housing fit?

Better yet, could you find me a pair of yellow H1 housings from France? I would love to find a couple pairs to put in the Dart and the VW.

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I've been calling it as i see it for my entire life and that's not about to change. Take it or leave it.

There are *all kinds* of options for what to put in a 7" round headlamp bucket. The Jeep TJ uses a 7" round sealed beam, just like a Dart uses. Same headlamp.

France required yellow light for all forward-facing lighting functions from the 1930s until 1993, when the European Union told them they had to switch to white. This was accomplished in several different ways; with the common H4 high/low beam two-filament halogen headlamp it was achieved by means of an H4 bulb with a yellow glass balloon over it. Prior to the H4's introduction in 1971, the only halogen headlight bulbs available were single-filament, so there were some 7" round headlamps made with two reflectors and two bulbs inside, and some of those had yellow glass lenses. I do have a couple sets of Marchal Amplilux 7" round 2-bulb headlamps with yellow lenses...talk about a rarity! Contact me via my website (see below) if you want to talk about picking up yellow headlights.

In Canada, for white headlights, the easiest and best thing to do is go over to Crappy Tire and pick up their C$90 set of Bosch 7" round H4 conversion lamps. That package comes with standard Osram H4 bulbs, which are perfectly fine, or for an additional upgrade you can use the Sylvania Xtravision 9003XV in the pink-and-black package. DON'T buy the "SilverStar" or "CoolBlue" -- a bulb that has any kind of color to the glass does not improve lighting performance, actually worsens it (by filtering out light you could otherwise use) despite heavy marketing pressure.

Relays and better wiring are always a good idea, see http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech ... elays.html. And then we can talk about improving the performance of the brake/turn lights, the backup lights, etc...it's not done with LEDs!
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lets "talk about improving the performance of the brake/turn lights, the backup lights, etc" since i have no clue how.

<<lets "talk about improving the performance of the brake/turn lights, the backup lights, etc" since i have no clue how.>>

Well, there's a number of issues at play here... the condition of the lens, condition of the "reflective chrome" inside, condition of the bulb [ie type/watt/etc] and the condition of the wiring all play an important role.

First i can tell you that having your wiring all tight and making sure that you're getting the max juice to your bulb-- and the bulb is the right unit is gonna a big issue on how bright your lamps are. unfortunately that's my bag, baby. perhaps SSD can enlighten us [yes, the pun is fully intended].
Now, onto things i can answer.
If your lenses are all cracked out, foggy or just in a general state of disrepair, the light appears all washed out and dim. having good, clear lenses is a good start. second, if your reflective material in the "bucket" is all crapped out then that's an obivious detriment as well. repairs run the gamut of low-end to super zooty. "rechromng", carefully applied reflective tape, and fogging it up with some "chrome" from home depot are all options. assess your situation and act accordingly.

-JYH
certified master of disaster
SoCal Baby, SoCal

Not all focus light directly ahead. Depending on the type of lens used in them, they can appear to be just as bright from the side as straight on. The led's that look cloudy and aren't translucent will have good visible light from the angles, where as the clear ones will tend to be brightest at the front.