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MG MGA - halogen instrument light bulbs

Gentlemen,

Does anybody know a supplier of these replacement bulbs in the UK? Are they a good idea?

Regards

David
D Townshend

I got mine from LBCarCo in Farmington, Michigan, USA. I put them only in the large instruments. 10 watts Halogen is a lot of light, making instruments very bright. DO not turn them down with the dimmer knob, as halogen bulbs do not like low voltage (the shortened life is counter intuitive). I don't know if they are available in the UK.
Barney Gaylord

Try Tim Hodgekiss at

http://www.vintagemotorspares.com/

I have 5w halogen in the speedometer and rev counter and find them excellent.

On the other hand I have found the halogen stop/tail bulbs have a very short life.
Malcolm Asquith

Malcolm -- Can the other dash lights be changed e.g the temp/oil pressure and the fuel gauge ?
David
D C GRAHAME

I changed all my bulbs to halogen including dash and side/tail lights. Makes a HUGE difference in visibility and safety on marker lights and brings the dash gauges to "modern illumination standards"

Personally I never understood the function of the dash light dimmer...when are you supposed to use it? When parking your car and you want to leave parking lights on but not dash lights? It makes the normally-dim (with regular bulbs) gauges completely unreadable.
Jim P

What about LED replacement bulbs for instrument, side and indicator's they use less power.
http://www.autobulbsdirect.co.uk/led-bulbs-12v-c-589.html
Dave
58 Roadster
Dave Swinburne

LEDs are polarity sensitive and do need negative earth.
Malcolm Asquith

So presumably there is no point in trying them when the car is +ve earth ?
David
D C GRAHAME

I installed an LED dash bulb into my 62 which is still positive earth and it works fine.//nk
N Kopernik

I would think that the LED auto lamps have a diode bridge built into them so that they will work with either polarity, connection polarity doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere they are sold. But true, Malcolm, a straight forward LED is polarity sensitive.
Lindsay Sampford

I typically dont like the excessive heat a halogen bulb creates, but LED on the other hand draws less voltages is brighter and has very little heat associated with its brightness.
Chris Velardi

I got some red stop/tail LED lamps and they were definitely polarity sensitive and would not work with positive earth. Maybe some have a bridge rectifier, but in my experience not all do, so check before you buy.
Malcolm Asquith

I have just had a further look around and it seems that both positive and negative (and 6 volt) auto led bulbs are now available. Things have changed in the last 12 months.

My search was originally for a combined white/amber one to use for the front side lights/indicators on my 1500 but still can't find one of those. The "dual wattage" ones such as the stop/tail use the same individual red LEDs but one of the two contacts has an additional resistor to drop the current. I had hoped that with a bit of surgery I could convert an existing white/white dual brightness type to white/amber but decided in the end it would be easier to start from scratch and that is an other job still on the list.
Malcolm Asquith

David
I have found another alternative for the large instruments which is flourescent tape. This is quite often sold by computer "tuning" companies on e-bay etc. and is all 12V. I found a supplier in Hong-Kong who delivered in a week.
The tape fits nicely in the larger shell and gives a very even source of light across the whole dial.
I have not yet done this in my MGA but I have put this in my E-type and it works well. For the Jag a green colour was used to emulate the green lens that went over the bulb.

Neil
Neil Purves

Here is some information on making LED light bulbs work properly in 12 volt (automotive) situations
http://www.offroaders.com/tech/LED.htm
Chris Velardi

Jim P,

I am of the exact opposite opinion. When driving at night, I want no distractions and turn my dash lights either down very low or off completely.

While halogen lamps can be dimmed, the excitation threshold is too high to dim them to a level acceptable to me. Similarity, LEDs must operate at full, stated excitation so that rules them out.

Certainly for exterior lamps, I think LEDs are the way of the future. Halogens produce quite a bit of heat, and have shorter life than LEDs, especially when dimmed as has been noted by Barney Gaylord.

As far as I can determine, many American cars are still using tungsten filament dash lamps for the same reason. But in the more expensive cars, flourescent lighting is certainly great. The technology to dim flourescent lighting has been known for some time.

The issue of converting 1950s and 60s electrics to 2009 technology has spawned a whole bunch of innovators. It seems that a major issue is the positive ground on our cars. I would direct you to an archival entry on LED lighting going back to 2008 on the TD/TF forum see:- http://www2.mgcars.org.uk/cgi-bin/gen5?runprog=mgbbs&mode=archiveth&archiveyear=8_2008.dat&access=&subject=8&subjectar=8&source=T&thread=2008051922422521043. Bud Kruger is a major contributor to this topic and well he should be, as he designs specialty automotive lighting.

However this provokes a whole new subject, which is not the issue of this thread.

The standard dash lamps are OK for me, and as my eyes are quickly ageing, the standard ones will have to do.

Gord Clark
Rockburn, Qu.
Gordon A Clark

thanks Gordon. Yes I keep my dash lights bright at night, I want to know when I am hitting the tach red line. I only check the speedometer occasionally :) On those occasions when my dash lights have shorted out, or blown a fuse, I get worried when I can't monitor the engine temp or oil pressure.

I keep an old tungsten bulb in the fuel gauge and the map light.. The halogens are too bright for those.
Jim P

This thread was discussed between 30/07/2009 and 05/08/2009

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