Home	*LED replacement bulbs*

If we add up all the wattage when all our lights are on you would find that our limited 6volt 8 or 10 amp batteries will quickly drain and the generator will have a hard pressed time replenishing our battery storage.

So if we add any additional power "sucking" devise such as Hella bar end signals we are quickly in trouble. I understand that all of these lights will probably never be all on simultaneously for long periods of time however it would still be nice to lower our power consumption and therefore the strain on the electric's. If we substitute most of our lighting with LED lights we can greatly reduce our power consumption amongst the many other advantages of using LED lights.

	Standard Incandescent		LED substitute
Head Light	25watts /	4.17 Amps	4.17 Amps	*Not replaced*
Head light pilot light	2watts /	0.33 Amps	0.020
Generator charge light	2watts /	0.33 Amps	0.020
Neutral light	2watts	/ 0.33 Amps	0.020
*Brake light* Tail light	*20watts /* 5watts /	*3.33Amps* 0.83 Amps	0.160	160mA combined Brake/Tail
License plate light	5watts /	0.83 Amps	0.020
Hella turn signal lights	18watts /	3.00 Amps	0.350
Total		13.15 Amps	4.76 Amps

Some of the LEDs are available commercially and (to my knowledge) some are not. Our problem is a 6-volt power supply, there is not a lot of commercial support for 6-volt systems any more.

Rather than make the rear tail and break light there is available an LED cluster light from LEDTRONICS part #1157-0ER-006V. Surprisingly these are being produced in 6 volts and with the 15D-bayonet socket suited to our original light fitting. They are cluster LED and are really bright however consume very little power, rated at only 160mA compared to the standard incanadesant tail light bulb recommmend at 10watts which is 1.67A @ 6 volts. It's rather expensive at 32.50USD but if it last as long as it should it's worth it.

The other bulbs in our system are much harder to find in fact I couldn't find any rated at 6 volts. So I had to make them

	This is the basis for our project a standard incandescent light bulb with d25 base
	We are going to need the bulb base, a 10mm LED and a resistor. To work out the dropping restor values go to the LED light Torch page. It's a very simple calculation.
	*Remove the glass bulb (be careful the glass shards can flick into your eyes or cut your fingers, use gloves and eye protection).* If we are lucky we will be left with the original ground wire that is soldered to the body of the bulb. We will need this to connect to the - terminal of our LED. However if it breaks off it's not a problem to solder on a new earth connection wire
	I'm using small table mount wise to hold the shell. You can see that I have dug the resin out that originally held the glass bulb. The ground wire is still attached
	Then we use a dremmel drill and a 1-1.5mm-drill bit to drill a hole through the end of the case.
	This is a picture showing the hole drilled through the original shell positive terminal.
	This picture shows where the leg of our dropping resistor will go through the shell hole
	I have soldered the resistor to the + leg of the LED. We then have to solder the ground wire to the - leg of the LED. That's the tricky bit! It's a fiddly job.
	This is the resistor and the ground wire soldered to the + and - legs of the LED. Now we must be careful until we pot the LED into place. There are special potting compounds that you can buy, but they are quite expensive and I don't believe in this case they are nessacary. I just used some 2 part epoxy resin glue that sets in about 5 minutes
	*This is our LED Light after the epoxy has dried with the end of the resistor sticking out from the hole that we drilled.* I'm using little electrical tape to protect the LED lens while holding it in the vise.
	Next we cut the end of the resistor wire and using a small flat file, file the end of the terminal flat.
	After the filling we simply use our soldering iron and some electronic solder to solder on a new terminal….. and we are finished
	Our finished LED bulb!!
	This is the Neutral and Charge light holder. I've placed a standard bulb and our LED bulb side by side for a comparison. The 10mm LED bulb does stand a little higher, but that won't interfere with the lens of the head light shell.
	This is the holder and LED bulbs in the head light shell
	And this is one of those LED bulbs connected to show that it works.