LED Indicator Warning Light

[NonMember]

I have one of Paddock's ones in my Spitfire. Very nicely made but the tint is a little dark so you can't see it flashing in daylight. Probably OK on a Herald saloon.

[Badwolf]

I just ordered 10 of the appropriate sized white led bulbs off fleabay and replaced all my panel lamps on my spit. Cost me coppers. No problems at all up to now, and much brighter. I do have a cheap 'Maplins' 12v buzzer across the terminals of the indicator warning bulb for extra audio warning so that may have some effect on voltage and stuff.

[Mjit]

22 hours ago, Badwolf said:

I just ordered 10 of the appropriate sized white led bulbs off fleabay and replaced all my panel lamps on my spit. Cost me coppers. No problems at all up to now, and much brighter. I do have a cheap 'Maplins' 12v buzzer across the terminals of the indicator warning bulb for extra audio warning so that may have some effect on voltage and stuff.

Well your first mistake is buying the wrong colour LEDs - https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk/blogs/news/why-you-should-not-use-white-leds-behind-coloured-lenses

Having tried both (I too went the eBay route before finding Classic Car LEDs) I can say the coloured ones do work a lot better than the white ones.

[Colin Lindsay]

2 hours ago, Mjit said:

Well your first mistake is buying the wrong colour LEDs - https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk/blogs/news/why-you-should-not-use-white-leds-behind-coloured-lenses

As some of my green filters had melted over the years I just changed all of mine on the GT6 to white, not green. The difference is quite startling at night, but quite pleasant, and while I'd like to try green LEDS just to see how they compare, I've no intention of taking the dash out again. White also matches the display on the CD unit too so that's a bonus.

[Badwolf]

I wasn't aware that I had made a mistake? You don't normally put a coloured bulb behind a coloured filter, as in the coloured  jewel filters in a speedo clock etc. , as there is no point in filtering filtered light. This just increases the amount of light lost on its way to the eye. I believe that with the top down bright warning lights are a must. They certainly suit me.

[NonMember]

1 hour ago, Badwolf said:

I wasn't aware that I had made a mistake? You don't normally put a coloured bulb behind a coloured filter, as in the coloured  jewel filters in a speedo clock etc. , as there is no point in filtering filtered light. This just increases the amount of light lost on its way to the eye.

Actually, no. The coloured filter works by not letting other colours of light through. White light contains all the colours, so putting a white bulb behind a coloured filter causes big loss of light. Putting a bulb (OK, LED) that only emits green light behind a green filter results in almost no loss of light because there's no "not-green" light in there to start with.

It is true that you don't normally put a coloured filament bulb behind a jewel filter, but that's because there's no such thing as a coloured filament bulb - it's a white bulb with a coloured filter already applied to it.

[Mjit]

Also while white light is a mix of all the different colours of light, that doesn't mean all white light is 33% red/33% green/33% blue, so shining the white light from two different sources through a green lens doesn't mean you're getting 33% of the light going in coming out for every different type of white light bulb.

Green is one of the 'better' colours, with similar levels of green in the light from an incandecent bulb to a 'cool white' LED and actually daylight levels for 'warm white' LEDs.  It's a different story if you use one for say a brake light LED, where incandecent bulbs are strong but both 'cool' and 'warm' white LEDs very weak.

[Colin Lindsay]

On 23/05/2020 at 15:20, NonMember said:

I have one of Paddock's ones in my Spitfire. Very nicely made but the tint is a little dark so you can't see it flashing in daylight. Probably OK on a Herald saloon.

Out of stock.  

Managed to track one down on eBay - they're shared with MGs and other cars of the period.

[Peter Bates]

On 22/05/2020 at 16:51, rlubikey said:

Peter, instead of chopping the cable, why don't you simply unplug the warning light cable from  the flasher and run a new wire to your LED?

Cheers, Richard

I decided to do this.

Except the socket that the flasher unit plugs into is made of what looks like bakelite. The 3 wires go into the socket but there is no obvious way of disconnecting them without breaking the unit.

So i had to cut a wire anyway.

Connected up and hey presto it worked..Sort of

The warning light flashed but not consistently. The brightness of the light was inconsistent. The first flash was ok but then the next was not as bright and the next then it would go bright again and so on.

I screamed and put it back to what it was to start off with and will look for the jewel lens (out of stock at James Paddock)