Been in and out of hospital again recently, so not much done on the SJ.
However, since I was stuck indoors, I got my soldering iron out.
New LED rear light cluster:
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Yes, those look a lot like normal SJ lights, and the lenses are exactly that. I made the bits under them though, super simple - just cut out a bit of ali checkerplate and put some COB LED's on the back, wired up to the loom.
I made diffusers to go between the lens and the LED's so they're a bit "softer" and more natural looking. They're nice and bright, and as bright from weird angles as they are from directly behind - which the old land rover lights weren't. They had fresnel lenses in them to focus the light, this meant they weren't as noticeable from the side, which I didn't like - someone could miss that I was braking if they were off to one side - for example, in another lane of the motoway, or coming out of a side road.
So I'm happier with the safety of these.
Also put some LED bulbs in the front. Didn't make them, just got them on ebay for a quid.
Not as happy with these, they're too focused. From directly in front of the vehicle, they're actually a bit dazzling. So I'll just make some diffusers for them to make them more "glowy" and non-dazzling.
Gonna swap out the front indicators for LED's and the fog lamp for LED's. At that point the only incandescents I'll have on the little truck will be the headlamps and the instrument cluster.
I quite like these, but if I were to do it again, I'd buy a completed unit. I've paid more for LED COB's and bits and pieces than it would've cost to buy cheap ebay units by a factor of 3 at least. The LED COB's alone cost a quid each and I've used 20 of them, then bits and pieces like voltage regulators and individual LED's that I experimented with must add up to more than a tenner.
In the end I worked out how to make it without needing voltage regulators, just LED's that have a fairly wide operating voltage range (11.2v-18v) so I know they won't blow due to excess voltage and should work with the battery low. We'll see how they hold up long term.
