Is it just mine or are all the lights that Nissan fitted on the 300ZX crap?

 

Anyway, sick of not being able to see at night when reversing I decided to do something about it today

 

First of all I used four x 3 Watt white LEDs and put two each side. I used some resistors I had lying around (rather than buying some wirewound ones) I used 22 ohm resistors, six in parallel then another six in parallel to give a total resistance of about 8 ohms. They dissipate quite a bit of heat! I would suggest if anyone wants to build a similar circuit you just by a couple of power resistors instead

 

The pics tell the story well.... so here goes. The little bits of wire sticking out from each end of the veroboard are purely there to physically mount it in the reversing light enclosure

Edited January 8, 201312 yr by dicky96

Here is the unit mounted, you can see how I fixed it in place by drilling a couple of very small holes and pulling those stiff wires through the holes from the end of the verobard, once i had it posiioned correctly i bent the wire over ( I pointed a green arrow in the pic so you can see what I mean) then put a dab of glue on to hold it all in place. I actually used some of the cut off resistor legs for the stiff 'wire' to mount the board :sneaky2:

 

I soldered the wires to the exisitng wiring for the bulb holder so I could just plug everythign back in to the wiring harness

Great work bud, looking forward to the fitted pics :)

this place is becoming a minefield of clever people lately...great stuff there Dicky:thumbup1:

And here is a short video of everything back on the car and working

 

 

Silly me while filming, absent mindedly took the keys out of the ignition and eventually the turbo timer times out lol

 

The 3W LEDS were from ebay I payed about six quid for a pack of 10. The resistors and verobard are very cheap. The whole mod should cost you less than a tenner and you will have plenty of LEDs left over for other projects

 

Anyone wnating to have a go at this should be able to do it from these pics - there is ONE cut track on the veroboard, you an see it in the pic. Also make sure your wires soldered to the LEDs do not short out onto the aluminium star shaped heatsink that is attached to it!

 

Rich

awesome i was thinking just the other day that the stock reversing lights are about as bright as forrest gump.

Think I'll have to break out my soldering iron, you've given some great info there and I need to build myself some :yes:

 

Can you get those leds in red as well, for the fogs?

dicky, i hear your a bit of an led wizz, im currently contemplating on supplementing some of my aquarium lighting with led. your fairly new so probably don't know what i get upto, but anyways light colour spectrum and par readings are paramount for me, is that something you'd be able to discuss with me? i know the leds id need are cree xtes in royal blue 10k white and 20 blue, but i dont really understand all the driver business.

Can you get those leds in red as well, for the fogs?

 

You can yes, a lot of us do have the led boards from when Zedwizz used to make them up, one for each chamber with the top two being red.

 

Sure you'll get lots of takers if you can move on from this prototype Rich, for starters red for the offside and white for the other perhaps - might well have one of each colour for myself :cool3:.

this place is becoming a minefield of clever people lately...great stuff there Dicky:thumbup1:

 

I agree - nice work matey!!

 

Richard:cool3:

Well actually funnily enough - I ordered some red 3W LEDS from ebay (these were like about £12 for twenty) and they should be the same brigthess as the white ones

 

I was intending on putting another strip of veroboad alongside the white ones, to have either LED brake light repeaters combinef with my reversing lights, or to have fog lights combined

 

Or both - using a diode so they come on with both brakes and fogs

 

As for having the top section reversing and the bottom section brake/fog - no problem In which case you could fairly easily fit 3 x 3W leds behind each section side by side.. That would be even brighter than this version with 3 leds per side instead of two and would look pretty cool actuially.... now you come to mention it :drool:

 

dicky

Edited January 7, 201312 yr by dicky96

dicky, i hear your a bit of an led wizz, im currently contemplating on supplementing some of my aquarium lighting with led. your fairly new so probably don't know what i get upto, but anyways light colour spectrum and par readings are paramount for me, is that something you'd be able to discuss with me? i know the leds id need are cree xtes in royal blue 10k white and 20 blue, but i dont really understand all the driver business.

 

 

It is not possible to PM you m8, says your account will not accept PMs

 

dicky

It is not possible to PM you m8, says your account will not accept PMs

 

dicky

 

registered users can't receive or send PM's.... you'll have to exchange emails addresses on the open forum... :)

registered users can't receive or send PM's.... you'll have to exchange emails addresses on the open forum... :)

 

or tell him to get his hand in his pocket and sub up...Under 3 pennies per day:D

I didn't have time last night to load up the circuit diagram (which is very simple) so here it is.

 

Here you can see the two LEDs are wired in series with the resistor

 

I used a resistance of a bit under 8 ohms for each pair of LEDs which gives a current draw of about 500mA at 12V (total 6 watts - which is correct as each LED is 3 watt)

 

The LEDS can handle up to 700mA, though i doubt they will be noticably brigther so you could get away with a 6.8 ohm 10W resistor(Maplin H6R6) or 8.2 ohm 10W resistor (Maplin H8R2)

 

Price of resistors 79p each

 

If you get your resistors elsewhere, make sure you use a 10Watt resistor as it is dissapating around 6 Watts so gets pretty warm - you may get away wih a 7 Watt one at a push

 

 

The LEDs I used are 3 Watt cool white LED 'Stars' http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10PCS-3W-Cool-White-12000K-High-Power-LED-Light-Emitter-with-20mm-Star-Heatsink-/221064294501?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3378757065

 

That is for a pack of 10 for less than £6 inc postage (OK you have to wait a week or two) yo can buy them individually but at about £1.20 each it aint worth it as you need four anyway

 

The stars have 6 'tabs' two have the LED soldered to them, the other four you can solder to, two are +ve 2 are -ve. See attached pic

 

Just be careful that if you solder bare wires and mount them to the veroboard, where the wires bend around the ede of the 'star' that you don't short out against it as it is aluminium

 

The output power of each LED is about 180 lumens so they are BRIGHT with a capital everything!! My four LED prototype is kicking out around 700 lumens of reversing light - yet only draws about 1 amp.

 

I would really like to do a three LED per side reversing in the bottom sections of the panel, plus three LED per side fog (or brake repeaters) in the top sections of the panel

 

The 3W red LED stars are about 80 lumens each

 

So you would have 480 lumens of RED (six red LEDs) plus 1000+ lumens of reversing light (six white LEDs) :tt2: :tt2: :tt2:

 

And the beuty of it is, with 3 LEDs in series you would need a lower value resistor that would run cooler, and still only draw 1 amp for the reversers and 1 amp for the fogs/repeater!

 

I'll be happy to post up the build plans and make some up for members (at a small profit) once i got it working right. It would need some sort of divider building into the existing bulb enclosures

 

You would simply reconnect your normal wiring loom with the original connectors for the reversing lights and would have two terminal block connections. One where you would have to wire to your fog light circuit and optionally the second connector for wiring to your brake light circuit as required. If I put a diode in the brake circuit then when your fog lights were off they would be used as brake repeaters instead (optional) :innocent:

 

So now, here is the teaser guys - anyone want to send me a spare rear panel to work on, and in return I'll build you one for free once I prototyped it?

 

cheers

Rich

Edited January 8, 201312 yr by dicky96

So now, here is the teaser guys - anyone want to send me a spare rear panel to work on, and in return I'll build you one for free once I prototyped it?

 

cheers

Rich

 

I'll do that for you Rich as I have lots of bits, the panel I will send is cracked/crazed so ideal for experimenting on :cool3:.

 

Pm me your address again and I'll get it off prompto.

prefect m8 cheers

OK here we go version 2

 

The fog lights show as four distinct LEDs (they don't look yellow like the pic - that's just my camera makingh it look like that) and are really bright

 

The reverse lights are mega bright! You can't even see the individual LEDs

 

Four white and four red LEDs now used

 

The meter shows the current drawn approx .50 amp for fogs and 1 amp for reverse

 

Hows that looking?

 

Will put some pics of how I made it later

 

Rich

Edited January 20, 201312 yr by dicky96

Why is there a difference between the white light and the red Rich, I do know the camera does lie but you've used the same type of 'bulbs' I believe ?

Another thought I've had ;) would a piece of diffuser paper help matters ?

Yeah I agree Andy, it needs some way to diffuse the Fog lights but it is not easy to do.

 

Though to be honest it does not look too bad with the four red dots. The Reverse light also has four white dots, however that light is so bright it is actually painful to look at for more than a fraction of a second so you don't really see the individual LEDs. Although these are all 3Watt LEDs the White ones are about 180 lumens of brightness and the red ones about 80 lumens.

 

I don't think a diffuser sheet would help a lot as one of the other problems is that the fogs LED pcb must be mounted close to the clear 'window' to get it to fit. That is because there is less space behind the two top reverse lights than there is between the two bottom ones. I fitted the fogs PCB into the top 'windows' as I walso wanted it to double up as a brake light repeater when the fogs are off, so it only looks right if mounted in the top.

 

I originally tried with the PCB mounted further back in the bulb enclosure but it only lights about 3/4 of the aperture as the last part is covered with plastic and it did not look right.

 

I then cut this plastic away to illiuminate the whole aperture but because the hole in the metalwork of the Zed is narrower than the reverse lights 'lens' it means the PCB must be mounted very close to it otherwise it would not fit. You did mention that the Zedwizz PCB also mounted by cutting away part of the plastic on the rear panel. I've never actually seen a Zedwizz PCB or how it mounts so would be interested to see if they had the same issue and how they got around it.

 

It is not so much a problem with the reverse lights which fit into the bottom 'window' as there is more space, and you don't need to cut away at the plasticc on the back panel either. So not only are they much brighterthey are also mounted further back.

 

All this will be much clearer if I post some pics so here goes. This is how I built it.

The vertical section of PCB is there just to act as a divider so the LEDs only illuminate the correct aperture

I need to upload a clearer picture of the rear of the reverse lights PCB so you can see track cuts and soldering (if anyone wants to have a go at building this) just let me know

 

The Red fog LEDs are all wired in one 'daisy chain' of four LEDS like this

 

+12V --> 4.7ohm 5W resistor --> +LED1- --> +LED2- --> +LED3- --> +LED4- --> Ground

 

Note the LEDs have a + and a - and all need to be the same way round!

 

 

The white Reverse LEDs are wired like this (two daisy chains of two LEDs)

 

+12V --> 4.7ohm --> 4.7ohm -- > +LED1- --> +LED2- --> Ground

 

+12V --> 4.7ohm --> 4.7ohm -- > +LED3- --> +LED4- --> Ground

 

This is because the red LEDs have a 'forward voltage' of about 2.5 Volts each so there is plenty voltage to supply all four (4 x 2.5 = 10V)

 

The white LEDs have a 'forward voltage' of about 3.5V so if you wire all four in one chain (4 x 3.5 = 14V) there is not enough voltage to light them properly

 

This is also why the red LEDs draw about 0.5A and the white ones about 1 Amp (0.5A per 'daisy chain')

 

I used 2 x 4.7 ohm 5 Watt resistors in series for each chain of two white LEDs, beacuse that is what I had lying around - it would be easier to use 1 x 10 ohm for each chain instead - but make sure it is rated at 10 Watt

Edited January 21, 201312 yr by dicky96

I have another idea... which is to use a single 10W Red LED instead of the four 3W LEDs for each fog light

 

The 3W are 80 lumens each so 4 x 80 = 320 lumens per fog light

 

The 10W LED is 500 lumens so a single LED would be brighter and I am thinking I can mount it further up inside the fog light enclosure. I am not sure it will evenly light the entire aperture as the lamp enclosure is only about 3/4 the length of the aperture 'window' (as described above) but it's gotta be worth a try. Maybe two 10W LEDs mounted high up in the reverse light enclosure would give a more even light if mounted at different angles - I ordered a few from china to play with (as they were 20% of the price of any I could find in the UK) so guess they will be another week or two.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1pc-High-Power-Super-Bright-Integrated-LED-Light-Bulb-Beads-10W-Lamp-Bulb-Red-/300840485047?pt=UK_Light_Bulbs&hash=item460b7d80b7

 

Of course I also have to modify the design of the divider between the fog/reverse sections as well, though I may eventually have something that works properly lol

 

Any other ideas/suggestions Andy (and anyone else who likes to play with car illumination (groover where are you?))

 

cheers

Rich

Edited January 21, 201312 yr by dicky96
speeling mistaks

Dicky can you not use the 1w led's or is it harder to get the resistor for that size, ive seen local electrical trade store having 1w on display even them buggers were bright.

@trev

 

No problem using 1W LEDs (resistor value is higher) I use yellow ones for my LED indicators and indicator repeaters

 

Not sure one would light up the whole of the apeture though, for fog lights. I would imagine they would look like the set of 4 x 3W that I tried (but slightly less bright)

 

Maybe them 10W buggers will be too bright lol but I ordered a few now from Hong Kong so will have a play with them when they arrive