My LED Project

cdoyle

cdoyle

Member
Well, I finally got some of my LEDs put together and installed on the Runner.

After a couple trial and errors, I'm pretty happy with the results.

Here is a photo of one of the completed LED wedges.

ledproto.jpg

This one has 3 5mm superwhite LEDs epoxied into a empty wedge that I
bought here

The LEDs themselves I bought from HERE

I did try some of the already built ones that they have, but the LEDs that they used seem to have a more 'purplish' color tint to them, I was looking more for a blushish/white tint. Plus the LEDs I used for the parking lights have a rating of 22,000mcd, which seem to light up the housing better.

Here is a shot the headlight assembly with the LEDs on.
headlight1.jpg


I think it looks so much better then the stock orange colored bulb that was in there.

Here is another shot with the headlights on too.
headlightsandleds.jpg

It does make my Silverstars looks a yellow doesn't it. Would look even better if our Runners came stock with HIDs.

The parking lights weren't the only ones I replaced. Here is shot of the map lights. Here I used 4 3mm superwhite LEDs.
maplights.jpg

These sure light the inside of the Runner up. Plus it has that cool superwhite glow to it.

I also replaced the bulbs in the doors too,
doorlight.jpg

It's pretty neat now, it not only lights up the door, it lights up ground too. The stock bulb never did that.

Now on to the Running Boards :D
Here you can get a good comparison on how bright they are.
Here is a shot of one of those 'Xenon' bulbs that were posted on here a few months back.

xenonbulb.jpg

Ya, it's OK but not very bright. Actually less bright then the stock bulb.

Now look at this.
LEDrunningboard.jpg


I still need to buy some more LEDs to finish the rest of the running boards. Plus I want to do the License plate lights too. I'm also going to construct something to replace the dome lights too, they look so yellow compared to everything else now.

If you decide to do this, and order the wedges, one thing I noticed. The first time I ordered them, I got white ones like pictured above. The second time I ordered them, they were a clear wedge (which at first was cool) but then I also noticed that they are slightly smaller. So it's alot harder to fit everything into it. Especially when using the 5mm LEDs. So if you order some, see if he has any of the larger white wedges left.

So what do you guys think?
I know awhile back there was a thread about those 'xenon' 194 bulbs, and I have to say these LEDs are way brighter then those.
 
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Sweet. I especially like the running boards lights......with the stock, you can barely notice them, let alone actually use them for much.

Now for a few questions:
Are you the first on here to do this?
How difficult is it?
Are there any risks involved?
How much has it all cost so far?
Did you say the ones in the heads are parking lights? I guess this is a stupid question, but when do these come on?
 
Hi,
Thanks, glad you like it.

Ya those running boards look so much better now.

As far as I know, I think I'm the first one to do this :)

Difficulty wise, I would give it a 5 out of 10.

The hardest part, is trying to hold the LEDs, and then trying to solder them together, without droping them. Or getting the LEDs too hot and ruining them. I'm not sure how in the world the place you buy the wedges from does it, or how they cram 6 3mm LEDs in there. They must have a machine that does it for them or something.

One thing to note LEDs by themselves can't run off of 12v, so you need to put a resistor in series. Go here to get the calculation of what resistor to useresistor calculator I ran all the LEDs in series with 1 resistor.

Now, when choosing your supply voltage, I used 14.5. I put a multimeter on the battery terminals and noticed that when you rev the truck up, that the voltage can climb up to about that.

One thing I'm going to try next time is, I found some resistors on the net, that are physically smaller then the ones you buy at radio shack. So it might make it easier to cram them into that wedge.

Harm to the 4Runner, it shouldn't. As long as you didn't short anything out putting it into the wedge, you should be fine. Nice thing about LEDs, there is almost no heat from them, and they take very little current to make them light.

The parking lights on mine always come on when the headlights are on. You can also have just the parking lights on too. It's the first setting on the headlight control.

Cost so far, I think I'm around $40 or so. That's including the epoxy, solder, leds, and the wedges.
 
The LED's you put in look great. Just a quick question, how hard was it to put the LED's in the map lights and door lights? That could be the next thing on my agenda.
 
Wow, awesome! How long did it take to do all 8 wedge bulbs? Nice job!

I bought the 5-LED "Matrix" bulbs from autolumination.com and currently have them in my car. I like how they point in all directions and really reflect off the reflectors in the maplights. I agree with you on the color though, they're a little purplish. I'm not good or very experienced in soldering so I chose to get the ready-made ones, lazy me! :D
 
Good Job. I am thinking about doing my entire tailight assembly with LED's, but need to find out more about flasher relays. I know to know what type of load caused them to function properly and at what load they think that a bulb is burned out. Would something like this be in a wiring schematic?
 
Mark86 said:
The LED's you put in look great. Just a quick question, how hard was it to put the LED's in the map lights and door lights? That could be the next thing on my agenda.
Click to expand...

Actually these were pretty easy. The map lights I used the 3mm ones, I wasn't sure if the 5mm would be too tall, and would hit the lens or not. I think the rating on the 3mm's were 12-15000 mcd.

The doors I used 3 5mm, and they work pretty good.
 
Cleric said:
Good Job. I am thinking about doing my entire tailight assembly with LED's, but need to find out more about flasher relays. I know to know what type of load caused them to function properly and at what load they think that a bulb is burned out. Would something like this be in a wiring schematic?
Click to expand...

That I'm not sure? I also thought about doing the turn signals and break lights. It sure would look good!!


Another LED mod I would like to experiment with would be with the foglights.

I found on the net a guy who converted a 9006 connector to hold 4 10mm LEDs
see here

I would like to try this using the 5mm LEDs. Try and get at lest 5-6 LEDs maybe more if possible.

I want to do this, but I know it just won't be bright enough to even bother with, but yet there is that part of me that want to waste an afternoon and give it a try :D
 
I purchased a battery power soldering iron called Iso-Tip. It is great not having a power cord following you around when working inside of vehicles. It works great. My other soldering iron is an adjustable Weller varing temp. model.
 
You guys rock.

Ok, I had some LEDS for my brake lights in my 93 (keep in mind it has no high-mounted center brake light). I took them out because when I had the headlights on and pressed the brake pedal, it wasn't a very significant change in the appearance of the light. It changed patterns and if you weren't watching carefully, it wasn't a very noticable change ( it resulted in a lot of screaching tires behind me, especially at dusk).

Does anyone know of a LED brand that changes intensity instead of pattern? I miss having them.
 
That looks really good. Has anyone done LED work to a 3rd Gen? I know my parking bulbs aren't the wedge-shape. Right now I have the stock turn signal bulbs and amber colored parking light bulbs. Both lights have been replaced with clear ones though, so it doesn't look like I want it to. I want both to be a good amber color. The current parking bulbs are kind of a light, cheap looking orange.
 
cdoyle said:
Well, I finally got some of my LEDs put together and installed on the Runner.
After a couple trial and errors, I'm pretty happy with the results.
Click to expand...

You gave this website: http://autolumination.com/festoon.htm
There I found: "Festoon Dome LED Light Bulbs". If I'll buy one of this dome LED bulbs, do I still need to get a resistor, or they will work with 12v?
 
Oh, if you get some, let us know how they look.

I think they basically did what I did, the main difference is they have them installed inside the glass tubing thing.
 
cdoyle said:
Oh, if you get some, let us know how they look.

I think they basically did what I did, the main difference is they have them installed inside the glass tubing thing.
Click to expand...

I'm in Toronto, Canada, so I wrote them an e-mail, asking if they can ship to Canada. As soon as I get a positive reply I'm going to order some. Otherwise I'll have to find someone in states who can order them and then ship to me. Probably I can get someone help from this forum. It's so difficult sometimes to order stuff to Canada, nobody wants to deal with customs. I'll post images after I'll get and install them.
 
cdoyle said:
Now, when choosing your supply voltage, I used 14.5. I put a multimeter on the battery terminals and noticed that when you rev the truck up, that the voltage can climb up to about that.
Click to expand...

One thing to keep in-mind, when performing calculations, is that the battery
 
cdoyle said:
Well, I finally got some of my LEDs put together and installed on the Runner.
I also replaced the bulbs in the doors too,
doorlight.jpg

It's pretty neat now, it not only lights up the door, it lights up ground too. The stock bulb never did that.
Click to expand...

Do you know what type of the bulb in the door lights?
 
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