LED Driving Lights

[barry wilkins]

I want to make up some driving lights for my caravan . I bought a 1M strip of LEDS on ebay . One interesting thing I discovered ,if you overrun the LED,s they flicker ,looked to me that the LED,s actually switch off if they are too hot, this seems to happen about 14 volts .So when I get round to using them I will drop the voltage to about 10 volts.
A guy who lives near has a white van with the strips just stuck on the front under the headlights and on the grill, but these are exposed ,and don't think that is very durable.
So what I would like to do is stick the LED strip onto a length of aluminium to absorb the heat and then insert the strip into a clear plastic tube. If I fit this under a head light I need to bend the tube slightly , if I fit some just behind the front grill they could be straight.
What I would like to know is how easy would it be to bend a piece of acrylic tube ?
Would the heat from the LED,s give me a a long term problem with the plastic ?
I am thinking of buying some tube off of Ebay in the next month to make a start on these.

Barry Wilkins

[kc8adu]

Re: LED Driving Lights

those strips are a big joke.
you should see the backup lights on a olds 442 i have been helping to restore.
altilon 1x4 in each.
daylight when you hit reverse.
those could be used in driving lights too.

[momaka]

Re: LED Driving Lights

those strips are a big joke.

+1
The LEDs in the strip themselves aren't actually that bad, but to make them brighter, the manufacturers often "overdrive" them. Most don't last more than a few months, if even that much.

Undervolting the strip to 10V won't help much either. The current-limiting resistors that they use in the strip are usually 150 Ohms. Each one is connected in series with 3 LEDs in series.

If you want long life out of those LEDs, you would need to replace each current limiting resistor. I recommend at least 470 Ohms. But that's a lot of work.