STARrrr

My order of Luxeon Star LEDs came in. I decided to order a few to play with, and to rebuild the center mount brake light on the FX. Safety check snuck up on me. I cleaned out the bulb socket in the rear drivers side, corrosion had taken a toll and made bulb dim. I also noticed my first custom LED attempt for center mount brakelight was performing rather pathetically. It was done the lo-tech way with a bank of “hi-output” LEDs and some resistors for current limiting. Unfortunately the electrical system output on cars is not exactly stable and eventually the LEDs started failing. And these “hi-output” of that time were the brighter of the affordable, conventional size. Since then, a new generation of super hi-output LEDs have had enough development time to come down in price. So I decided to not muck around, go for it and replace the bank with a single first gen Luxeon Star. And not wanting to mess around with building a power circuit for it, went ahead and ordered a Buck Toot driver unit for it. A bit of saw, file, drill, sand, Mother’s work on a tape backup cartridge plate produced an aluminum mounting plate. I’m pretty sure this plate will also serve as a more than adequate heat sink for the LED. Here is the product of my afternoon of work. I know, I know, it’s not completely shiny. My air orbital sander decided to crap out, this only being the second use of it! LED’s have their light quite directional already, so I didn’t think making a mirror shiny back reflector would make much a difference anyway.

 Oh, I should mention I used a plastic/nylon washer under the heads of the screws holding the LED in, don’t want to short the solder pads.

Looks pretty good! Too bad I can’t drive it!