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Thread: Save 25 Watts (or more) LED lights mod (brake, tail, side markers, plate, etc.)

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    Senior Member 3dplane's Avatar
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    Save 25 Watts (or more) LED lights mod (brake, tail, side markers, plate, etc.)

    Hi!

    You would think by now new cars would come equipped with LED lights everywhere. That's not the case and it beats me as to why?

    It can't be cheaper to make incandescent bulbs than LEDs by now.

    Today I tackled the two 5W bulbs per headlight and the two tag light bulbs in the back on the Mirage.

    I had some fleabay LEDs laying around ( I believe 3W max rated )

    With a 200 ohm resistor this LED draws 49mA (0.049A) with the engine off(12.X V), and 51mA or 0.051A with the engine running (14.X Volts).

    That is about 0.72W.

    Each factory bulb draws 380mA (0.38A)engine off and I have not tested engine on but I'm sure it's at least 400mA.

    You can buy this type of bulb's LED replacement (5w5,194 etc.)but I made my own using the LEDs I already had.

    Here is an image of the old bulb,LED,resistor and a piece of flat plastic strip I used for the bulb body.





    I cut the plastic strip to the width of the original bulb,cut two notches for the wire to bend around later,
    hot glue the LED to it , solder the resistor and the other wire,bend it around the bottom of the strip and done.

    (BTW the hot glue is not going to melt at the back of the LED because the current draw is way below the LEDs rating and it is not running warm. If I turn out to be wrong on this,I will come back to report)

    It is ugly but here it is:




    In the headlight: (also behind amber corner marker but that is not visible)




    Turned on in daylight:




    At night:






    Licence plate illumination:


    So as of now six 5 Watt incandescent bulbs or 30 Watts replaced by LEDs for a total draw of less than 5 Watts!

    I will probably do more like interior light,trunk/cargo light which btw comes on with the interior light, possibly tail lghts but that's a different kind of bulb.

    Can I measure the fuel savings? No but it is there. If you don't believe me,you never turned a hand cranked generator to feel the difference between lighting a 27W bulb and just free spinning with no electrical load.

    The engine has to do the same to turn that alternator. All the little things add up!

    Cheers!
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    Last edited by 3dplane; 11-24-2013 at 01:24 AM. Reason: typo

        __________________________________________

        click to view fuel log View my fuel log 2014 Mirage DE 1.2 manual: 66.3 mpg (US) ... 28.2 km/L ... 3.5 L/100 km ... 79.7 mpg (Imp)


  2. The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to 3dplane For This Useful Post:

    fifteenwindow (11-25-2013),Flange (12-23-2013),GrnBn (07-10-2014),laceygirl (08-25-2015),MetroMPG (11-24-2013),zefke (12-07-2013)

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