"Secret" Project is finished *PICS*

[chevychic]

*WARNING* LONG and lots of PICS**

I finished the project I had going on my car and will be doing my truck sometime this summer. I redid all the lighting in my dash with LEDs. Not the kind that plug into the receptacle that are pretty spendy when you have several to buy, but I wired in my own LED's. Of course I had to do white face overlays for the cabriolet as well. It looks pretty tight. I have a few things to do to the lighting to fine tune it and get it perfect, but I think it turned out great.

Now for the pics...sorry guys...they're all VW pics for now:

Here's a pic of the stock gauge cluster. This isn't mine, but one identical.


This is a pic of my cluster with the overlays installed:


They're so much easier to create and install because the gauges are FLAT instead of curved. I just scanned them in and went to work customizing them. I made the VW logo from scratch. Not too shabby I think

Here's a shot of the led lighting at night. The camera picked up the light beam pretty well. In person, the light is diffused so it doesn't appear streaky as it does in this picture. In the bottom center is a digital clock which I dissassembled and wired red LEDs into. They don't show up because they have a very small candescent rating.




For the installation, I just picked up a breadboard from radio shack:


I used 4 blue LEDs with a mcd (millicandescent) rating of 4000 *I could've landed planes at my house with this high of a mcd*
I picked up the LEDs online at www.lsdiodes.com for .45 each. Way cheap compared to anyone else I looked at.
For the actual installation, I first grabbed the #1 necessity for any project:



I dremeled out individual boards out of my breadboard to supply a support for each LED and to create a power supply board to power my LEDs.

First went in a 5 Volt voltage regulator to protect my LED circuit from power spikes. Now that I have a constant 5 volts running to my LEDs, I wired in 1 15 ohm and 3 1 ohm resistors to create a resistance of 18 ohms to properly power my 4 blue LEDs at the normal forward current of 2.6 volts for this particualr LED. The LEDs are wired in parallel so each LED can receive the same current off of a smaller voltage.

Frontside:


Backside:


Lights:


I lightly sanded the LEDs with my dremel to diffuse them and spread the light out to more than a 30° radius as they come.

To light up the clock I ran a separate voltage regulator and wired in the appropriate resistors. The smaller board positioned on top of the larger board in the first picture is the main board for the clock LED circuit.

The clock circuit is spliced directly to my headlight switch and my main cluster circuit is wired to an open dimmer wire I had from my stereo harness.

The fine tuning I need to do is rework my solder job. I suck at soldering so I think I have a few cold solder joints and maybe a lifted pad or two so I get a little bit of a flicker in a my first and third LEDs. I'd also like to have the main LED circuit on it's own line from the fuse box and run a wider range of a resistor potentiometer so I can dim the LEDs as low as possible. Right now I only have a small ohm range in my current dimmer switch so the brightness barely changes when I have it dimmed all the way.
Luckily I work at an electronics assembly company and can have one of our solder assembly pros do a very professional solder job. Plus I get a discount on all my components through the company...paying .27 for a voltage regulator and .08 for a red LED is a nice break compared to $2.49 and $1.25 at radio shack!

Anyways, that was my project over 4th of july weekend. It was a lot of work, but very fun and I think it turned out pretty well for my first attempt at this.

Next project is rebuilding my transfer case. Thanks to Eddie and G for the diagrams and procedures. And somewhere in there I'll take the time to wire my truck dash with LEDs as well.

[Lynx]

Thats awsome! cant wait for the truck version!

[apstguy]

Very Awesome. I've been working on lights for the interior of my truck. I'm not going to mess with custom lighting for the gauges as I'm eventually just going to get Dakota Digital gauges anyways. I'm not exactly sure how to fix some of the problems I have and I don't have a ton of time to do a ton of work this will take. I'll get to it eventually. Heck, I made my own LED licence plate lamp.

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/agenta...eriorleds.html

[plumbcut]

way to make us feel like slackers, heather! im very impressed. Wish you had some better pictures of the clock though??

as for soldering, are you using a gun or an iron? I personally prefer a good adjustable heat range iron, and acid-based flux.. You have to buy the stuff that says "not for electrical connections" but it is far far superior to flux core wire or the flux paste for electrical stuff.. you just have to clean it well afterwards because it will corrode the wires after a period of time.

anyways, this really tempts me to build a breadboard w/ led's for the rear taillights of the 73-87 style truck. Does anyone make them? Ive seen them for the 67-72 style and they're expensive. Id gladly make my own and maybe a few extra sets. any ideas? Sorry to thread-jack

PC

[N2TRUX]

Originally Posted by plumbcut

..... this really tempts me to build a breadboard w/ led's for the rear taillights of the 73-87 style truck. Does anyone make them? Ive seen them for the 67-72 style and they're expensive. Id gladly make my own and maybe a few extra sets.....

Wow Heather that is awesome work! It reminds me of the good old days when I had time and motovation to play with electronic projects. Like plumbcut says a good pencil iron works wonders for this type of job. If you practice a little off the board and it will come to you pretty quick.

plumbcut no one makes a board style led tail light that I'm aware of. The problem I see is it would have to be built as a complete tail light assembly, and not just a bolt in board. Since our tail lights are of a one piece design vs. 67-72 with a reflector bucket and a lens.

What you would need to do is seperate a lens and mount the led board inside on the back half. I have an old lens laying out in the garage. I'll take a look at it and see how much trouble it would be to get apart....

[GMC1tondually4dr]

That is really nice work!!

I wish I could get along that well with electric stuff.

I like it when people do neat things that nobody else does.


Keep up the nice craftsmanship

CCDually

[chevychic]

I was using a soldering iron. The guns are just too clumsy.
I actually have an iron on order http://www.coldheat.com/products.php

I plan on getting more practice with soldering. The people I work with solder fine-pitch IC's on a daily basis. Their work is awesome. I'd like to be able to do fine pitch work like that and change out the LEDs in my Sanyo 8100 camera phone.

Thanks for the comments. I'm pretty happy with how it looks.

[N2TRUX]

That is a cool iron. I think I want one of those too....

[plumbcut]

wow that is a pretty neat iron especially since its only $20.... I guess my soldering suggestions are more suited toward large guage wire, which is what I usually deal with. I wouldnt go near a phone with some of my soldering tools! Not if I wanted it to work when I was done, anyways.... My idea of "cordless" soldering is an old iron with the cord cut off, and a propane torch on standby to heat it up... Hey--- dont laugh it works!

pc

[Grim Reaper]

Soldering is not hard. It's just a matter of having the right tools.
This is what I use at work. It's a Metcal Mx-500p
http://www.wassco.com/mx500ts11.html

http://www.metcal.com/



I also have a Weller EC2002m. It's nice till you have a chance to use a Metcal.


Nice work! Do a write up with part numbers and sources so we can all have LED dash lights

[chevychic]

Grim, The Metcal is actually the same unit my company uses.
My personal soldering iron is one I picked up from Fred Meyer. It's 30 watt and then I have the radio shack stand with the sponge. I can't wait until the other iron comes in so I can play with it.
I think my problem is the width of the tip. I haven't learned how to keep my hands steady enough to heat only the lead of the component that I want to heat.

BTW, Where do you work?

[Grim Reaper]

Originally Posted by chevychic

Grim, The Metcal is actually the same unit my company uses.
My personal soldering iron is one I picked up from Fred Meyer. It's 30 watt and then I have the radio shack stand with the sponge. I can't wait until the other iron comes in so I can play with it.
I think my problem is the width of the tip. I haven't learned how to keep my hands steady enough to heat only the lead of the component that I want to heat.

BTW, Where do you work?

I run one of Cingular's repair shops. Soon to be unemployed because cutomer service is not profitable. So I will be a slase person and aspire to be middle managment!