I hereby end all "dome light mod" threads lol
#1
I hereby end all "dome light mod" threads lol
Winner of all:
50 SMT LED's in my domelight....
It lights up the ground near the side of the cab, I can see all the puddles with the doors open.
This last pic is an old one that I gave to another Ranger-Forums member
My camera dosent really do it justice... Bright is an understatement. At 5AM I turned it on (to grab a CD out of my glovebox) cruising to work on the 94 in Chicago and the guy next to me swerved in his lane lol.
50 SMT LED's in my domelight....
It lights up the ground near the side of the cab, I can see all the puddles with the doors open.
This last pic is an old one that I gave to another Ranger-Forums member
My camera dosent really do it justice... Bright is an understatement. At 5AM I turned it on (to grab a CD out of my glovebox) cruising to work on the 94 in Chicago and the guy next to me swerved in his lane lol.
Last edited by Jp7; 02-14-2008 at 08:04 PM.
#3
#4
Quantity 2 - 25 SMT LED arrays (buy them on eGay, or autolumination.com) Price = 25$ each
Quantity 2 - Spade circle connector thingies you can buy from radioshack
Quantity 2 - Heatshrink wrap you can buy from radioshack
1 foot or so extension wire so you can reach the factory connections.
Hot Glue to put everything together.
Oh yeah, i used "quantity 1" Van Halen CD (1984) for my listening pleasure while working with tools in my livingroom
First you have to take apart a stock domelight and take out the connectors, I used the little loop guys and screwed them in to make the connection instead of those dumb ford ones. To give the domelight a raise up I cut the back of a CD case out and raised it up by hot glueing it in.
I used my dremel to cut and trim everything I needed too. I used a blank cd case to get some plastic material. Look at the pictures it will make sense to you.
You DO NOT NEED RESISTORS! - LED's draw like NO current. Even with the 2 arrays in parallel it dosent draw nothing compared to the dingy stock incandescent light. Your factory wiring will stay cool as a cucumber, even with all of this wiring in my domelight I still have my alarm hooked up to it so that when my doors open, my domelight turns on therefore triggering my alarm off.
Resistors are used when you do your tail light blinkers so that they pull more current, NOT A DOME Light! LOL
Last edited by Jp7; 02-14-2008 at 08:19 PM.
#5
PS all... My EVO has a much sicker LED domelight and maplight setup... I will update with pictures soon, I have the same 50 in my domelight of the evo, plus 45 more in the maplight (3 individual lights) near the rear view mirror.
I have been doing these for a while now so I am pretty damn good at it I think lol.
I have been doing these for a while now so I am pretty damn good at it I think lol.
#9
I cant remember honestly, but on the other Domelights I have done (without resistors for sure) there were no problems, current draw was very low. The resistance of the setup was in the megaohm range. Remember, current is drawn, not pushed.
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Some new LED's and arrays have built-in "drivers" or current sources which regulate the current to prevent self-immolation, lol. That's what your LED's have.
You can't measure the resistance of an LED array -- your meter is lying to you, lol.
They probably draw more than you think, but so much less than incandescents and their conversion efficiency is very high. Most of the energy they consume is radiated as visible light.
If you don't believe me, take a regular LED and hook it to 12 volts and hold it between your fingers. It might last a bit but will get very, very hot before it blows.
Edit: Got lost in the technical and forgot to say NICE JOB! I like them a lot.
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The factory dome light has a low spot to leave clearance when the factory dome bulb gets hot. I made that part of it flat by cutting up a cd case and using the clear plastic as a bridge across the low spot. I hot glued it together. For the Evo I bought some tupperware from Kmart and cut it up. Tupperware plastic is easier to use than CD case plastic because its more plyable and it wont really crack. Either way hot-glue was my best friend.
#21
AAHHH That's why you don't need resistors because you bought pre-assembled arrays, that have the resistors already built into the circuit. i see now, i couldn't see the pictures when i looked at this at work, i thought you built an array and then you would need loose leds and resistors to solder to a PCB which is what i am doing, much cheaper too, the one i am building to mod my OHC for both map lights cost me $16 for everything(leds, resistors, 22g wire, and PCB).
#23
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