LED Conversion for Brass Headlamps - Feedback

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

I have the LED conversion lamps (-purchased from Snyders) in my '14 Runabout that use the acetylene burner bases to mount them, and 12v battery power to illuminate. While I have owned them for maybe 3 years, they likely have only been illuminated for maybe 3-4 hours of total time. During OCF Gaslight parade this past weekend, one of them has become dimmer & dimmer where it is now barely lit now, and is VERY noticeably dimmer than the counterpart. A quick check of the electrical wiring shows no issue that I can see. Does anyone know if this is just a fluke failure for this type conversion lights, -or maybe is this length of usage time considered to be a reasonable expectation? Again, this vehicle is hardly ever driven after dark, so the total accumulation of time these lights have been under power is not that long (-I guess I was hoping for maybe a couple hundred hours of service from them ). So is my failure just a fluke and maybe I should just re-order another set of these brass lamp conversion bulbs (...and then keep one as a spare so I will never need it! ), -OR, in your opinion is there a better conversion set-up for the brass-era lamps that I should consider?

And without faulting these units, I am also unsure if this is normal service life expectation for these, ...however another concern is the light output of these lamps even when they were first installed is much 'inferior' to my LED bulbs that Langs sells for the later T lamps. Thoughts??

TIA

[tdump]

My experience with led lights in other applications , they are not living up to the "lifespan" they are claimed to last.
Grounding issues is 1 thing with a led .Also solder joints on the circuit board can vibrate. If you can see the circuit board the led's are soldered to,look for essentially "cracks" around the leads that are soldered in,if you see "cracks",this is refereed to as a cold solder joint,may be a simple re solder will fix it.

[Allan]

Brent, the unkind night call it Karma. A gaslight parade with LED lights?

Allan from down under.

[dykker5502]

The operating voltage for a LED is typically around 2 V. Apart from a voltage regulator IC several LEDs may be connected in serie which means if one in that serie fails, the whole serie will fail.
I have also experienced shorter lifespan of LEDs and the above suggested reason of failed soldering is very likely. Many of these are made in primitive workshops in exotic countries and not in an industry plant with temperature controlled soldering machines. So cold solders that shakes apart is definately an option for failure.

[Luke]

Brent,

Without a photo it's hard to give much in the way of useful advice, however earlier lamps would often series individual LEDs to approximate the right 'voltage' but could also sometimes overdrive them in order achieve a higher output. What occasionally happened is that one of the individual LEDs would fail as a result, sometimes slowly, bringing the others with it. Some lamps could also have clusters of series-parallel LEDs, which were not immune to the same issue.

As the others have said dry joints can be an issue, often repairable with some judicious work, however the fault you describe seems to me less likely to be this.

If it were me I'd locate the fault within the unit and repair it (I've been known to replace individual LEDs), but it's been suggested I'm unusual in the that regard ... perhaps you could post an image of them so we could better advise?

Luke.

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Brent,

Without a photo it's hard to give much in the way of useful advice, however earlier lamps would often series individual LEDs to approximate the right 'voltage' but could also sometimes overdrive them in order achieve a higher output. What occasionally happened is that one of the individual LEDs would fail as a result, sometimes slowly, bringing the others with it. Some lamps could also have clusters of series-parallel LEDs, which were not immune to the same issue.

As the others have said dry joints can be an issue, often repairable with some judicious work, however the fault you describe seems to me less likely to be this.

If it were me I'd locate the fault within the unit and repair it (I've been known to replace individual LEDs), but it's been suggested I'm unusual in the that regard ... perhaps you could post an image of them so we could better advise?

Luke.

Luke, below is a link to what they are. I may reach out to Don and see if he has any feedback on failures with these. My guess is that for $60.00, the quality is likely not the best anyway. Again, I was hoping they would have lasted longer, but maybe not.

https://www.snydersantiqueauto.com/c292 ... &cat=41889

[AndyClary]

It’s likely the quality of the bulbs. They should have built in regulation so that voltage variance isn’t an issue. There just too much junk on the market.


Andy

[Luke]

Luke, below is a link to what they are. I may reach out to Don and see if he has any feedback on failures with these. My guess is that for $60.00, the quality is likely not the best anyway.

That was very useful, thanks. I was able to swing around in my chair and closely inspect the almost identical emitter units that I have in a drawer here.

The ones I have are GY6.35 style with a shorter pointy end enclosed in a clear flexible type material, they cost around USD $1.50 at the time but are now up to $2 each. I had a bad batch of them around four or five years ago, but prior to that they'd been great and I still have some in operation that are ~8 years old and get used every day.

I expect the higher price of yours reflects the special base and the longer emitter 'wand' at the tip, along with the retailers margin. If it were me I'd simply replace the emitting unit(s) with the GY6.35 style that I have (you may even find the base is in fact already made up for them?).

Actually, I've now done a little more research. It turns out you can get what looks to be the identical unit (sans base) for circa $2.20 with the longer wand:

Screenshot_2023-09-13_08-23-03.png (158.99 KiB) Viewed 1263 times

If you want try this it would first pay to see if you can fit these to your existing base, and if you'd like a link to where they come from I'm happy to provide that in a PM.

Luke.

[BRENT in 10-uh-C]

Thanks Luke.

Do you think the units you are showing have a greater lumen output than the new units that I posted a link to?

[Oldav8tor]

I agree - it looks like the units luke referred to plug into the brass base that Snyder added.

It would be interesting to find out if the GY6.35 will fit into the brass base.
If they do, you've got a cheap way of replacing the ineffective bulb. Let us know what you find out.

[Luke]

Do you think the units you are showing have a greater lumen output than the new units that I posted a link to?

Brent,

There are several different units available with the same base configuration. They appear to range between 250 - 900 lumens, and 3W - 10W.

I have two types here, one was rated at 3W, the other at 5W, I don't recall now what their lm rating was. Subjectively they are quite good as a reading light and I find them adequate to light up a room (I run pretty much everything off low-voltage solar here), in my view they'd be fine as a carbide light replacement but YMMV!

I hesitate to make any useful comment as to whether they would have a higher luminous flux than the ones you reference, it's been my experience that the specification of these things can be a bit 'loose', but on the face of it I suspect you could get units that would be just the same, or brighter (or dimmer) as you wish. Note that you can also get them as 'dimmable' units, should that be useful.

What I tend to do is get more than I need, from multiple vendors, and evaluate them from there to determine what I'd get in future should I need more. This is what I did for the headlamp units now residing in my Model A. I now have several sets that are just 'ok' and one set that is perfect and I know what to get if I want more. For the units you're wanting I'd expect less variation and more certainty that pretty much whatever you got is likely to be fine - perhaps get two or more each of 5W 8W and 10W units to see what you think?

Luke.