product idea for tech typs:
LED head light bulbs & tail light bulbs for T's
and other old cars.
bill matz
beloit, wis
608-362-1482

It actually a very old idea but the technology is just not quite there yet. I works in the lab but there still are things to overcome. LED's are difficult to mass produce with exactly equal brighteness and with very intense brightness. The unit of light is the lumen and basically the most efficient practical LED's produce about 60 Lumens/watt while the T8 fluorescent setup can do 100 Lumens/watt compared to incandescent which is about 20 Lumens/watt. LED's clearly will be the eventual winner but not just yet. My numbers are armchair numbers and there are a few really good exceptions to these numbers but they are what I will call "home improvement store" light specifications. Have patience it will happen and it DOESN'T need a stimulus of a few Billion $$$ to hurry it along. Creative people are not motivated by money in spite of how much you might think they are. One of the most creative people I ever knew was a man I worked for and with for several years. We called him Sam but his real name was Satyan Pitroda. He was a PHD from India and a very free thinker. He and I spent a lot of time in either his office or mine just dreaming up things we thought might work. He went on to be a telephone technical adviser reporting to the very top leaders in India. he is back in the USA and still following his dreams. He is a very interesting man. Search for Sam Pitroda on the internet and you will find he has worked on all sorts of things. Many patents to his credit and he paid his own way to get here.

John - I've been working on this for a different application for a while now, but also keeping Model T headlights in the back of my mind in the process. The Triple Luxeon Rebels have the right numbers, in fact they're brighter in this application than the 32/32 incandescents. I just wish they'd put the warm-whites in the same package so a Model T wouldn't look like it had Lexus arc lamps. Anyway, it's just a matter of mounting them on a DC-Bayonet base and sticking one of their constant-current power supplies in line. They even handle AC input. Maybe a solution for magneto headlight problems?

I've been working with single Luxeon LED's, and you literally have to use a welding mask to look at them while focusing the optics. The technology isn't there for LED room lighting yet, but for focused beams like headlights, it's worth looking into. - Bruce

They are already avail.

Check out this webpage:

http://www.highspeedmotors.com/Webled.html

Made for 12v and 6v neg ground systems, pricy bulbs, but they really work in my accessory '26'27 stop taillamp as the LED bulbs fit horizontally. Don't work well in vertical position as the LED shines its light directional.

Lets say that I'm techno challanged. Are the these super lights on the market for are T's. I looked at the web site and they look like you need to solder something? It would be nice to be able to see the road when night driving. I bought a set of those LED 12 volt tail lights from auto zone for my trailer once and they were very dim. I ended up taking them out and tossing them and replacing them with the 1157's that was in it. Are the tail light bulbs showed any better for the price?

Will

There is no soldering needed, these LED bulbs just fit right into the socket. Not for everyone I would say. But these are bright, and for what I needed this is the only bright bulb I can use.

The accessory stop/tail lamp for '26-'27 has a horizontal socket. Any pin base 6v incandescent bulb must not be very long, otherwise it will hit the glass lens, the stock bulb used was 3cp, that is too dim for my road use today, maybe ok 80 years ago


This is the 1129 bulb, 6 -8v 20cp, very nice bulb for tail lamp, but it will not fit the accessory lamp, too tall.




Comparison of the type bulbs, the new LED on the left, and the regular 6v 20cp on right.


Here is the new LED bulb, its short enough to fit under the lens, and is very bright. Another advantage is this version has LED's around the perimeter, that shine to the clear license plate lens, so you get all around light coverage, with a big bright shine straight out for the tail lamp.

I probably should have noted that mainly the problem is for HEAD LIGHTS which the thread was titled. There is an additional problem that LED's present which is the viewing angle. Filament lights toss out light in all directions but LED's do not work that way. In truth all of these issues are very solvable and I am sure that LED's will be stock on just about every new car eventually first in tail lights as are already being used on some vehicles. LED's offer a LOT to the T tail light situation because you can light up a ton of them with very little power so no need to modify the electrical system since the original generator can easily carry a bunch of LED's back there in place of the one single light that was stock. Eventually the headlamps can go that route too and you should be able to run your T all night without worry since bright lights won't take nearly as much power as even the stock bulbs, let alone the power hog halogens.

I added some front and rear LED lights to my 14 Touring. They draw very little current. As a test I left them on for 7 hours and they only drew the small 12 volt battery in the car down .5 volts.





Paul

Will - I finally got back to the computer - had a tour yesterday. To answer your question - no, these "super LEDs" aren't a drop-in replacement (yet) for the incandescent lamps we use now. The LED lamps at highspeedmotors.com are not the new technology LEDs. They are just an array of standard LEDs mounted on the proper base for taillights. (You'll notice their web site mentions everything but headlights.) The Philips Lumileds I've been working with are a several orders brighter than these LED array replacement lamps. That's why I mentioned the welding mask. You seriously can't look directly at the new technology LEDs when they're on.

John - You're right about the viewing angle of LEDs, but they will focus correctly in a parabolic reflector if you move them back far enough. I can't tell you yet if that can be done and still keep the DC-Bayonet socket. They also make a side-emitting LED that may work better in this application. I have samples of both on the electronics side of my shop, but they're for the day-job right now: making a new light source for a planetarium projector. I'll let you know if they work adequately in a Model T reflector once I fit one up. They draw 700ma compared to the 20ma of a standard LED, but that's still a long way from the 4 amps of an incandescent headlight bulb.

I was able to purchase from Snyders, a 20-3 cp bulb for my '25. That enables me to use the stock tailight as a stoplight too. The problem is Snyders has staggered pins, so I had to file the high one off to get it to work. This bulb is the same size as an ordinary #63, so it doesn't hit the lens.