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What are you running for the backup light? I think I recall that ships as an incandescent as well - sure seems like the perfect place for a killer-bright LED though!
I don't know, I can't see them. It's similar to the trust that you have that the refrigerator door light goes out.
Most people that have replaced the reverse lights with LEDs have not improved their visibility. It may look brighter when you look straight at the LED but without a specifically focused reflector and housing the effectiveness is dubious. It's like the DRL's, they appear very bright to the naked eye but you cannot use them for useful road illumination.
I don't know, I can't see them. It's similar to the trust that you have that the refrigerator door light goes out.
Who looks back anyway????
Originally Posted by DB22
Most people that have replaced the reverse lights with LEDs have not improved their visibility. It may look brighter when you look straight at the LED but without a specifically focused reflector and housing the effectiveness is dubious.
Agreed - and that's why I asked. I seem to recall that light is your business (in a way) so if there were something that met your standards I'd look long and hard at it. I tried an LED once in my C5 and it sucked - but that was forever ago in LED years....
Hmmm, so the stock bulb is 5W and is driven directly out of the central convenience module, so I'm pretty nervous about exceeding that power level. Now I'm wondering about using a solid-state relay to drive several ~1 meter strips of LEDs....
Hmmm, so the stock bulb is 5W and is driven directly out of the central convenience module, so I'm pretty nervous about exceeding that power level. Now I'm wondering about using a solid-state relay to drive several ~1 meter strips of LEDs....
LED strips consume around 100 ma per foot for the 5050's and 3528's. Much less than a incandescent bulb. Hook it up to your meter when you're testing them.
Agreed - and that's why I asked. I seem to recall that light is your business (in a way) so if there were something that met your standards I'd look long and hard at it. I tried an LED once in my C5 and it sucked - but that was forever ago in LED years....
I am not convinced that an LED revering light is going to accomplish much except that it maybe the last remaining incandescent lamp to change. I reverse out of a garage every day in the dark and the camera is adequate for my needs, I have even used the "rear fog light" to increase rear luminosity but it does not help my cause and I have no problem with the present set up anyway so my motivation is minimal.
LED strips consume around 100 ma per foot for the 5050's and 3528's. Much less than a incandescent bulb. Hook it up to your meter when you're testing them.
Understood and agreed - but when I'm really annoyed by the trunk lighting is when I'm filling it with gear for a family camping or skiing trip and trying to pack 20 cubic feet of "stuff" into a 15 cubic foot trunk So I want more than just a brighter light source, but lighting that's diffused throughout and which isn't easily blocked in one single place.
When I started really looking around the trunk I was coming up with 2 or 3 places to put a trunk-width strip of LEDs, and I very much like the idea of a trunk that wasn't dimly lit and wasn't dark as soon as I filled it in the area of the light. I got 5630 strips (if some is good, more MUST be better) which are 15W per meter... So I'd get about a 1ft strip at 5W. Figure 400mA for the 5W light and I can "only" have 4 feet of 3528 even. Either way, to get lighting distributed around the trunk, I think I'm going to have to switch in my own power or risk eventually killing the central convenience module by pulling more than it was designed to source.
I need to poke around and see if I can easily get a power line down to one of the fuse boxes and see if there's a solid state relay which will track the PWM that I assume the module uses to fade out the lights. Or I might sit on my butt and never do anything at all
When I used to own a mk4 GTI long in the past, I installed some cold cathode lights in the trunk which brightened up the whole hatch pretty nicely. These lights are the ones used inside PC cases just for looks but they are much cooler (temp-wise) than neon-tubes and emit much more light.
I happened to find this cold cathode light in my storage yesterday (I guess I bought a few extra years ago) Maybe I should give this a try on my A6 to see if works out like it did in the past.
If you are interested, try googling "Cold cathode trunk light" All you need to do is tap 2 wires to the wires that go through the little trunk light bulb housing. You can also choose to use a switch or to just tap it directly to the bulb housing connector so that the light goes on and off together with the trunk being opened/closed.
in the "roof" of the trunk - one up against the seat backs, and one back at the "corner" of the trunk lid (directly underneath the spoiler).
A few things to note:
1) I was wrong about the PWM - I swear my C5 faded the trunk light out, but the C7 just turns it off, so there's no need for an SSR to follow the PWM, but....
2) I avoided any bulb-out codes by simply LEAVING the existing trunk light in place. Since the SSR draws less than 12mA, connecting it in parallel with the bulb works fine and the car's control module doesn't complain about a missing bulb.
3) My roughly 8 feet of 5630 LEDs still only draws about 1.3A - so you could do this with much lower capacity components and be fine
Crappy P&S camera pics - taken in garage with door closed and lights off (camera flash disabled of course).
Here you can see the wimpy incandescent factory light shining feebly along...
UPDATE +1 day: Well, numerous commenters on Amazon complained about the adhesive on the LED strips, and sure enough, after a few hours driving around and sitting in the hot sun, the strip nearest the rear bumper fell off! I had thoroughly prepped the trunk surface, cleaning it with rubbing alcohol, but apparently that wasn't enough. I've reattached that strip with some
from my local Pep Boys. Hopefully that'll do the trick. It will be interesting to see if the other strip's adhesive fails as well.
UPDATE2 +5 days: Ok, skip the middleman, even the better-sticking strip was starting to come undone - about 8" of it free-hanging when I checked today, it just hadn't dropped down enough to be visible from the back yet. My current advice is to use the 3M molding tape from day one! I spent 20 minutes peeling off the strip, goo-gone'ing and alcohol-swabbing the residue off and prepping the surface for try #2. Just pony up for the good tape and don't take chances on the cheesy stuff that ships on the LED strip.
Last edited by Richard Solomon; 08-28-2014 at 12:45 PM.
08-08-2014, 07:40 AM
