the other day i bought a red LED replacement for the interior roof light of my car. i think it has 2 LED lights in it, however it isn't nearly bright enough.... does anyone have any suggestions?

Suggestion 1: Take it back and demand a refund.

Other suggestions for replacement:

* Generally for festoons using "standardish" LEDs I wouldn't go for anything with under 6 in there. As a general rule, there doesn't seem to be much brightness difference between any of the standard-looking LEDs currently on the festoon market, so the more the better. Finding more than 4 in a 31mm festoon is hard though.

* If you can find ones that claim to be "1W", "3W", "5W" etc., and generally look like a big yellow blob on a hunk of aluminium, they'll probably give you more bang for your buck. About twice the price though.

* Make your own. A lot more complicated, but you can get some uber-extreme-brightness LEDs nowadays for not too much money; for example, I've got a bunch of Luxeon K2's I picked up for less than $5 each, and they'll pump out up to 130 lumens each. You'll need to devise a heatsink and resistor or regulator pack though.

alright cool thanks. i had a quick look on ebay and saw a few of the ones with the "big yellow blob". hopefully i can sort something out because at the moment it is almost like having no light in there haha...

Actually, you might have trouble finding red ones in high-power. White would be much more common.

I can't find the pics of mine off-hand (and car's elsewhere), but I think mine have 9 LEDs and are comparable to the old incandescents. The light from these is more directional though; maybe they should make them in more of a splayed array, so they point in more directions...

i donno what car you got but i managed to find a nice '4x LED' light that fit perfectly into my interior light slot. Take the original light that you had to autobarn (they seem to have the biggest selection of LED's) and ask them for a Red light with that type of socket. they should be able to find something

Not a matter of finding one that fits, it's a matter of finding one that's bright enough! There are plenty around that will fit, but a lot of the LED replacement festoons being flogged at the moment have pretty piss poor output.

yea that was the problem, there are plenty that fit, its just the brightness of the ones that are available that are the problem. i think i was a bit like Bart with his sponge dinosaurs...haha i assumed the car would light up like a UFO :nuts:

the make your own is very bright but will set u back around 30 odd dollars. try jaycar i believe.

For the roof I picked up a panel that was about 4x3 LED's which was wired to a replacement bulb. There is definitely significant light, just remember to give the panel a good clean afterwards .
The kit is from Jaycar, it comes with one LED panel and 3 different types of bulbs so you can test fit which bulbs you need where and how much light you need.



part no. ZD0485

I can't find the pics of mine off-hand (and car's elsewhere), but I think mine have 9 LEDs and are comparable to the old incandescents. The light from these is more directional though; maybe they should make them in more of a splayed array, so they point in more directions...

the easy way to 'mod' LED's to give a more 'spread' light pattern, is to lightly frost them with some emry/sand paper - concentrate mostly on the tip of it which helps to focus the light.
this does make the light output slightly less, but it has a wider spread so will illuminate more area.

can you find a red incandescent bulb to go in instead of LED's - i know they arnt as cool as LED but at least with one of them light brightness will be better.

also - keep in mind, different coloured interior lights may be illegal.
friend had blue interior lights in his TR, got pulled up by the cops for an RBT, his window didnt work so he had to open the door to do the RBT.
the officer made him remove the blue bulb there and then for his interior light saying it was illegal.
if he didnt have to open his door, then it prolly wouldnt have been picked up then..

panel that was about 4x3 LED'sThat's one thing about festoons, is that you don't necessarily need to keep it festoon-sized; you just need to get the power from the ends, then you can expand out to a larger board and fit it however it's required. Could quite easily DIY with perfboard and a heap of cheap high-brightness LEDs with appropriate resistors; you can get packs of 100 on ebay for like $10.

High-power LEDs like the Luxeon's or Cree's are simpler in that you only need one and they have very wide angle output, but they also require heatsinking and preferably a nicely tuned power supply method.

Plug-n-play is easier to implement though.

besthongkong.com has **** loads of different types of led "bulbs"
and they 10 million times cheaper than dick smith and all that