Has anyone converted rear taillights to 6 volt LEDS, and are there any special requirements for the reduced draw?
I currently have turnsignals/brake and running lights with conventional incand.'s
Addition: and yes, I had to install 2 Sockets hidden under the hood Vent to give the turn signal relay enough load to have his regular frequency! The bulbs now illuminate my feet... Maybe a pair of resistors would do the same, but I didn?t try until now.
Very komplex, as said.
Hi Lew! 01.07.2016
For my 51 I had to make separate separate chambers for the brake/turn bulbs and the taillight bulbs anyway to have it licensed here.
I have a vital much better visibility at sunlight now. I even can clip a 3rd brake light on top of the trunk lid when cruising on our autobahns here at speeds up to 87 mph.
Other drivers dare doing 124 mph and everybody is glad to see my brake lights clearly and in time!
(btw.: with overdrive the engine works at 2300 rpm and is not overstressed. But brakes, riding comfort and swaying let me like 75 mph most).
My LED brake/turn light works perfectly now, but its tests consumed all my spare time for some weeks!
At first, just putting (small enough) resistors and LEDs on 6 V didn?t work: even when soldered on a brass cooling base the resistors heat just unsoldered themselves an they fell down from the unit.
Another problem was that the nominal 6 V varies from 5,8 V up to 7,5 V under different battery and generator working conditions.
At the end, I found no other solution as to add an active voltage regulator with a big heat sink to have the resistors to do less work. My curved brake light chamber required a curved circuit board.
I managed to fit all into the available space as You see in the fotos. Anyhow You must find a way to fit all into Your light assembly, maybe by adapting a heat sink to Your light support tube or using the tube directly as cooling device. When using the same LEDs for both taillight as well as fo brake light, You will have to resolve the different intensities maybe via 2 separate voltage regulators, feeded one through taillight cable, the other through the brake light cable. Tuning 2 different intensities of the same LEDs could be very difficult! Better You try to fit enough LEDs for tail light plus adding more others for brake light.
Beware of power requirements if choosing the option of additional LEDs while braking! The Voltage regulator must feed all the LEDs plus the additionals at once, the VR for taillight only half of them.
To prevent back voltage, You must add a blocking diode after each (I don?t know if it may kill the other VoltReg??) voltage regulator, loosing 0,7 Volts. I put these in red to show the right place for this.
Be sure to have the layouts be tested for one socket double funktion bulbs!
If positive grounded, someone else has to turn the layout for You.
Maybe someone offers a simple replacement to fit in the original receptacle for 6V.
The first link doesn?t offer combined brake/taillight sockets because they aren?t allowed here. Even these have no official approvement here ("for offroad only"). For Oldtimers instead, they allow just following visual judgement.
http://www.benzinfabrik.de/de/search/?q=bremslicht
20 years ago such was not available.
Maybe this helps too::
http://www.dynamoregulatorconversions.com/online-shop-for-led-bulbs-and-light-boards-etc.php
https://www.ledlight.com/s25-24-led-light-6-volt-dc.aspx
Greetings and goold luck wishes from D?sseldorf!
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