Brighter parkers

[Breeze]

So with the nice blue glow of the HID lights the parkers look very naff in yellow.

Option 1: Go out and buy some new LED super bright replacement wedge bulb. Pull off the bumper, grill etc, pull out the lights and swap the bulbs. Turn on at night and there is a faint bluey white glow from the parkers - worse than the stock bulbs. Oh well thought I'd leave them in as it is such a PITA to get them out again. Two days later one stops working.

Option 2: Rather than get a second set of pissweak LED bulbs, decide to have a play. In my mind I think the LEDs are about 5 mm so I order 4 17000mcd bulbs (to do two cars) from here

http://www.dpt.co.nz/

Get them a day later and realise they are pretty small (the normal ones are 10mm. So I wire two of these in parallel with a drop down resistor, stick them in the wedge housing that the crappy super brights came in and bugger me if it doesn't look the duck's nuts. This is a job any womble like me with a soldering iron can do and regardless of what you may think it doesn't look all ricey, just cool white light from the parkers to match the HIDs.

[gt_dicko]

If they're not bright enough for you Jaycar does a 30,000 mcd in 5mm.
or if you really wanted to go fancy, you could put in a 1W, 3W, or even a 5W Luxeon star module.
That's probably getting a bit too bright though

[Ric]

...
So I wire two of these in parallel with a drop down resistor,
...

This is a risky way to connect them. It doesn't ensure the LEDs will equally share the current.
It would be much safer to use an individual drop down resistor for each LED.

Depending upon what voltage those LEDs require, wiring them in series could be more efficient, and only require a single (smaller) resistor.

[Ric]

I'm assuming the supplied resistor is about 390 ohms.

If you wire them in series, then reduce the resistor value to 270R.

[Breeze]

Not really enough space to wire them in series without having them hang out of the wedge casing. If they go bang then I have wasted about $9. I am working under the assumption that current will take the path of least resistance and there is no quantifiable difference in distance from the resistor to each of the leds (soldered the resitor to the legs of each).

Given how bright these are I would be wary of the 30,000mcds as I am a bit worried I might get in trouble for these.

Anyone seen the LED running lights/parkers on the new Audis? Now that is an LED light that could be done in series and fairly easy. Wonder if it would look daft on the legacy or forester.

[cadud2000]

you guys do relise if you goto repco or autobahn you can buy replacement LED parker bulbs that are 15 LEDS built into 1 small unit. I have replaced my front and read parkers and number plate lights to these LEDs and from the ones lighting the number plate, they are so bright it looks like I have Blue Undercar neons.

Definatly worth looking into and will be alot easier than having to mess around with different leds and resistors and everything else. from memory for a pack of 2 it did cost me $15 tho.

[teK--]

Sounds like you are doing things the unnecessarily hard way, by wiring up your own LEDs. As suggested just get the T10 style wedge globe fittings which have multiple SMD LEDs built into them. The ones that have 5 SMD should be adequate for the parkers. Plug and play you don't need to remove your bumper or grill or anything, just reach in behind the indicator lights and change them over in situ.

I use the same ones in my license plate lights and they are very bright they light up the ground behind the car in a light shade of blue. About $10.00 shipped from Ebay for the pair.

[adhar]

I'm using these bought from Leo as my parkers:


viewtopic.php?f=42&t=6132

They are a good amount of light.