2002 Tahoe Luxeon interior lights

[rudbwoy69camaro]

I am curently in the process of making all the interior lights Luxeon. Well, most of them. Right now I have Lux 3 emitters in the puddle lamps, First row:Lux 1 stars for the maplights with nFlex UIF drivers and L2 optics, Lux 1 star for the new courtesy(there is no top courtesy lighting, only the footwells light up). Second row: being worked on. Third Row:Lux 3 star in the third row courtesy light, and two Lux 1's in the third row for passenger lamps.

The doors will be as Don's:http://dmcleish.com/courtesy-lights/index.html, 9 3mm LED's.
A big THANKS to George at taskled.com for helping and directing this newbie=)

I'm just excited, I had to post! Pics to follow tonight !

[rudbwoy69camaro]

I drilled the lense of the eyeball and epoxied an L2 optics Narrow beam angle lens - 5 degrees with holder. nFlex UIF's drive them and are excellent. The switches are from RadioShack, SPST normally open. I had to drill out the old ones so that it could hold the new switches. For the new first row courtesy light, I drilled a hole for the Lux 1.
Here is a shot of the First row:



I wanted to make sure that heat wouldn't kill off the leds, so I got some heatsinks. I cut them down to size and used some Arctic Alumina Adhesive. The wires are 22 gauge teflon. The courtesy light is held down with 3M double sided tape.
Backside of the panel:


Here is the second row. The headliner is cut and support brackets are placed for two "14 CCFLs. The bezel will be carbon fiber.
Second Row:


CC1Ws on the side and CC5W@700ma for the Lux 3.
Top shot of the third row:


Aluminum sheetmetal for the brackets. You can see the newbie soldering iron marks on the plastic=(
Bottom shot of the third row:


Aluminum bracket, heatsink, Lux 3 emitter.
Puddle lamp shot:


CC5W@700ma
Puddle lamp shot 2:



I plan to do the driver and passenger footwells with Lux 1s. Hmmm, should I do the doors with Lux 1s as well....?

I hope to put a Lux 5 for the reverse lamp. I saw an article about the Audi A8 having Luxeon daytime running lights. I plan on doing something like that.


NIGHT SHOTS TO FOLLOW. I'm tired right now

Antonio

[HarryN]

That is really nice work. I hope to see it at a local meet soon.

[rudbwoy69camaro]

Originally Posted by HarryN

That is really nice work. I hope to see it at a local meet soon.

Thanks. I look forward to the next bay area meet.


Here is a shot of the first row, all on. Maplights on highest setting.:


First row, courtesy only:


Driver side puddle lamp:


Third row, all on:

[rycen]

Real nice!

[HarryN]

I am just curious - did it brighten it up a lot, or was it more for fun ?

[PoliceScannerMan]

Wow! Now that is sweet!! I bet it was hard to do!

[Darell]

I've done similar vehicle conversions with the same product! You've done a great job here! Fun, isn't it? Sure gets expensive though!

[s0crates82]

Hmm...

...you need to sell your designs to the Chinese.

I'm too lazy to build those myself, but I sure would buy a set!

[rudbwoy69camaro]

Hard to do: you betcha. I need an ergonomically designed workbench/area. My upper back was killing me. I worked on one side of the puddle lamps and it took long. But after that was done, the second one was no problem. It's like a time warp, time elapsed so fast when I was working on this project, yet it seemed like I was going nowhere. The puddle lamps are bright and color is great. I'm starting to think about if I should've put some Lux 5's in there. If I had to build them second time around, I could do it faster Indeed expensive, but the results are excellent. My favorite is the maplights, no more light "spraying" everywhere. The third row has the light that kids and I need. I need a better way to cut and bend the sheetmetal, like a mini sheetmetal brake. That's the only complaint I have. Thank goodness for halted.com, eighty five cent heatsinks, and all the teflon wire anyone could want.

I was waiting for someone to chime in about the second row. I was joking about putting the two fourteen inch CCFL's with carbon fiber bezel in the second row. I'm not trying to set up that in there LOL. The flipdown was out for repair, and I hope to fit a Lux 1 star for coutesy and L2 20 degree optics for the passenger lamps.

More to come...

[Changchung]

Great job but some expence... i preffer the cheap way with maybe the same result... and easy to do...

Hi, this is what i put in a Explorer of a friend of me, i used 5mm 12000MCD Leds, this SUV have three lamp, i put 8 leds in each one but in the lamp of the front passengers hi put 16, the pics dont show the light thats give, but trust me, is a very good light...
I put too 8 Leds in each corner lights in front...


This one belong to a Fiesta for another friend, how this car have a single lamp i decide to put 18 of the same Leds... WOW... the light output is amazing... I make the light to for the back light... and some 1157 too...



Front Lamp of the Explorer, 20 Leds...



Later i post some pics showing what i do in the tail lights...

[ROVER]

Very nice work. Changchung, you've inspired me to put a pile of 5mm leds to good use I'll actually use everyday.

Question for anybody: since the car runs at about 2vdc higher than with the motor off, will having individual resistors for each led give a more consistant level of light than putting one resistor per series of three leds. When I look at ohms law, it seems like when the difference between source voltage and vf are great, the circuit has kind of a bigger "buffer" to change current less with respect to changes in source voltage than a circuit where the difference between source voltage and vf is relatively small. Is my logic correct?

Thank you and keep those pictures coming

[rudbwoy69camaro]

Second row top shot:


Seond row bottom shot:


Second row on:


A bit of over exposure, forgive me.

*wheeeewww* All the top lights are now Luxeons. Now for the footwells. I wanted to do blue leds back then. But I'll continue with some white Lux 1's.