Lighting your Dutton.

[Adrian Southgate]

I moved this off Paul's thread as well, it just seemed to be the polite thing to do...

The discussion regarding lighting may go on for a bit.

I've been using LED technology since the late 80's for various things. Special effect, model making, domestic lighting and of course car lights. I've experimented on three or four of my vehicles with varying degrees of success. LED's work best in an environment designed to suit them. Trying to fit a shallow angle led into something designed to accept a tungsten filament bulb is awkward.

CMV is all LED apart from thee headlight bulbs and the reversing lights. I've had about 8 different styles of indicator bulb trying to find one with an adequate light output. The ones I have fitted at the moment are the best I've had but they worked out at about £5 a pair compared to 80p for a tungsten one. 

I'd like to try and explain howto pick the right design of LED for the intended application and how each type differs.

Lets look at a normal light bulb  . These normally have a 'base' bayonet which fits into a socket. That socket doesn't need any light pumping into it as it it then wasted energy. So, the base is ideally a dark spot. Works with both types of bulb, tungsten and LED. The opposite end is 'normally' the bit that faces the outside world so chucking energy at it works for both bulb types - all good upto now?

Tungsten filaments work by passing electricity through a bit of wire and making it glow white hot, the hotter it gets the more intense the light. If this is trapped inside a glass case with an inert gas such as xenon it can get VERY hot and therefore will produce a good amount of light. As the glass case is transparent that light can escape in any direction which is why car light units have reflectors to spread the emitted light out and throw it in one direction. LED's however have a very narrow field of view. The 'filament' is actually two bare ends inside a tiny pocket of Gallium Arsenide... a pocket the size of a pinhead... when you look into an LED you can sometimes see one side is a cup shape and the other is a sparkplug shape electrode, the gas between the two electrodes reacts when charged to give off light, the chemical composition of the gas can be varied to produce different colour light. So when compared to a normal tungsten bulb the LED is way more efficient however due to the small size of the element the light output is smaller and concentrated into a beam by the small cup shaped reflector. The small cup shaped reflector also means the 98% of the light is thrown in one direction in a narrow beam. 

[Steve Kerswell]

The instructions are crap too, don't tell you which way round you have to wear it :-))  AND, if you get the rechargeable one you have to scratch your head to generate 4 watts of power.

[Brian (up north) Morris]

lol :-)))) hows that sierra now steve ??

[Steve Kerswell]

Never mind the Sierra, I got a 3 wheeler V6 Dutton in the garage and now a 2 wheel Marlin in the drive. I need more hands, more eyes and more time. And I may need that head torch to work nights :-))

[James Doulton]

3 wheeled? Is that 3 as in one more than 2 or 3 as in one less than 4? Still, I'm unlikely to have any passengers so I don't really need both wheels on that side.

[Dave Adams]

James....

I would strongly recommend you build a transmission tunnel like I and others have done from 1/2" tube.....

firstly it considerably strengthens the chassis against twist and flex something that 3.1 V6 of yours is going to give you....

secondly it will allow you to increase the seating room and pedal box width....

it adds very little weight... my car used 18M of 1/2" tube ( 75+ foot!) which only weighs 10KG.

your likely to have to reposition the 5 link arms.....

the front end Geometry on early Phaetons (and the Malaga B+) can be awful... your car having been pranged is not likely to have improved...... :-) Steve is putting a new front end onto your car? there are a few things that can be sorted while he is at it.

dont scrimp on the rebuild, that car has the potential to be a very good car, but it wants a proper sorting out, get the chassis and running gear right and it will all be plain sailing for you to do.

[James Doulton]

Mine would be permenantly charged, what with all the shaking of my head too.

[Dave Adams]

here is a link to the C+U regs on indicators (and all other lights if you look at other pages.....C+U regs on lighting 

oddly if your indicators are type approved there is no wattage requirement for the bulbs...if they are not type approved (E marked) its 15-36 watts.

[Dave Adams]

this is where there are issues with the C+U regs......

they some times give minimum wattage requirements...not minimum equivalent! so LED's can technically fall foul of the law.