Eye upgrade attempt 1 and attempt 2 success
Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 5:58 pm
Well as promised here are some pics of my efforts to give the Halos on my Depo lights a little lift. I ordered some CCFL (Cold cathode florescent Light ?) from China as they they where quite cheap - £20 + - , thinking that if it all goes wrong I havent wasted too much cash. The first problem was finding some that matched the diameter of the exsisting halo lenses. I bought the closest I could find hoping there would be a bit of give if required....
Here we are removing the CCFL tube from its lens.
Here is the larger main beam tube removed from its housing. It was about 10mm too wide to fit.
First of I needed to modify the exsisting housing to accept the new tubes. This is just a matter of cutting the bridging pieces to let the tubes sit inside the recess. This is the main beam again with the halo lens removed showing the bridging pieces which need to be cut.This was simple enough with some side cutters.
This is where I started to sweat, I started to eas the tuble into the original halo lens and all was going well, it seemed to be quite flexible until it went pop! - sorry no pictures at this point as I couldnt focus through the tears!!
After an hour off and some tea, I went to plan charlie 6 - fitting the leftover LED strip from my kitchen install..........
The only problem here was soldering the wires to the strips. I managed two OK and got them into the recess alright
The problem here was my soldering was not upto par and I had to remove one three times and re-solder before I got this far
The main beam ring had a duff LED, bad boy for not checking first...
The output was excellent and they looked really good but when doing the final wiring my soldering let me down again and one packed in again. At this point I gave up. The strip LEDs are definatly the way forward, they are much brighter than you would expect and the flexibility made them quite easy to fit in the recess and use the original lenses. I will buy in some new lengths of strip with pre soldered connector wires in the near future. I will update this post when I find the right ones at the right price so keep watching - this is not the end of this project.......
Well update.. finally got round to having another go with these little darlings I found...
]
They are a little too tall to fit in the recess and I considered just leaving as is but decided to glue the diffusers on top
They fitted width ways in slot nicely with a good firm push and a couple of dabs of superglue just to make sure.
Test run on the bench........
And finally fitted
Results are spot on and look real good also with the bonus of no check bulb warning.
Here we are removing the CCFL tube from its lens.
Here is the larger main beam tube removed from its housing. It was about 10mm too wide to fit.
First of I needed to modify the exsisting housing to accept the new tubes. This is just a matter of cutting the bridging pieces to let the tubes sit inside the recess. This is the main beam again with the halo lens removed showing the bridging pieces which need to be cut.This was simple enough with some side cutters.
This is where I started to sweat, I started to eas the tuble into the original halo lens and all was going well, it seemed to be quite flexible until it went pop! - sorry no pictures at this point as I couldnt focus through the tears!!
After an hour off and some tea, I went to plan charlie 6 - fitting the leftover LED strip from my kitchen install..........
The only problem here was soldering the wires to the strips. I managed two OK and got them into the recess alright
The problem here was my soldering was not upto par and I had to remove one three times and re-solder before I got this far
The main beam ring had a duff LED, bad boy for not checking first...
The output was excellent and they looked really good but when doing the final wiring my soldering let me down again and one packed in again. At this point I gave up. The strip LEDs are definatly the way forward, they are much brighter than you would expect and the flexibility made them quite easy to fit in the recess and use the original lenses. I will buy in some new lengths of strip with pre soldered connector wires in the near future. I will update this post when I find the right ones at the right price so keep watching - this is not the end of this project.......
Well update.. finally got round to having another go with these little darlings I found...
]
They are a little too tall to fit in the recess and I considered just leaving as is but decided to glue the diffusers on top
They fitted width ways in slot nicely with a good firm push and a couple of dabs of superglue just to make sure.
Test run on the bench........
And finally fitted
Results are spot on and look real good also with the bonus of no check bulb warning.
)