And yes, I already tried rec.autos.tech.
--
aem sends...
Can't you apply an acrylic blue tint to the bulbs. Or just suffer with a
white light?
--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse
I'm no artist or painter- where would I get that in small quantity at a
decent price? I was just thinking blue nail polish or model paint of the
'candy' variety.
--
aem sends...
A clear blue tinted nail polish might work if the lamp didn't get too
hot. I used to tint Grain of Wheat lamps all the time with nail polish.
You should be able to buy acrylic spray paint at almost any hardware store
or home improvement store. Walmart, Kmart, Target, etc. should have acrylic
spray paint in their crafts section as well as the paint section.
Acrylic spray paint isn't hard to find.
--
David
dgminala at mediacombb dot net
I suppose- I was thinking something that I could dab on, or just dip the
bulb in. I already have way too many spray cans sitting around going
flat, that I'll never finish.
No hurry at this point- the lights I put in are bright enough to at
lease SEE the damn controls. Maybe when it warms up again, I'll feel
more motivated.
--
aem sends...
When I got tired of burned out lamps in the CD/radio in my Chevy truck,
I replaced them with T1 white LEDs from DigiKey (and dropping
resistors). They worked perfectly, and even dim evenly with the normal
instrument dimmer control.
http://wpnet.us/guts.jpg
http://wpnet.us/closeup.jpg
http://wpnet.us/display.jpg
Yeah, I know, and that is what all the gearheads on the Dodge truck/van
forums said to do. But I am soldering-challenged, and haven't seen my
fine-point Weller in at least a decade. I'm sure it is SOMEPLACE here,
but....
The swap I did, and what I wanna do again with the correct parts, is
straight mechanical work, and totally reversible if I take the lazy way
out and find a real U-pick junkyard (none near here with anything newer
than 2000), and harvest some bulbs from shiny wrecks. I have no
convenient way to heat the board to tell which side of the hole in the
PC board is + and -, and no convenient way to solder to the trace and
get a good connection. These push-and-turn PC bases that the wire tails
wrap around are about 3 layers deep inside the mother. It took me about
3 tries to find a T9 torx bit to even open it up. In the Gen IV mopar
minis like mine, there are about 6 different variants of the HVAC
control pod. The documentation the parts guy had only applies to the
fancy version, with hard-mounted bulbs. 3 different dealers told me the
lights were not serviceable. I opened up the also-dark headlight switch
panel, and found holes for similar lights, but no lights and no feed
traces, and empty holes in the connector block. !#$%^& Chrysler had
'decontented' the vans by 05, to save a couple bucks here and there.
rant mode off
I know I have wasted way too much time and money on this already, but
'engineering' like this, done by bean counters, just pisses me off.
--
aem sends...
--
aem sends....
I don't know what "wire base" means. I don't think that's standard
terminology. But anyway, have you tried bulbs.com or one of those other
"we sell every light bulb known to man" type places?
> I'm no artist or painter- where would I get that in small quantity at a
> decent price? I was just thinking blue nail polish or model paint of the
> 'candy' variety.
>
Hit the tackle department of a fairly decent sporting goods supplier.
You'll find small bottles of paint for jigs and flies. That's what I've
used to touch up Christmas light bulbs.
Like the old NE-2 lamp. Wire leads, no base.
<http://www.donsbulbs.com/bulbs/g632/ib/a1a-ne2-a1a2~usa.jpg>
--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.
see
http://www.topbulb.com/find/Product_Description.asp_Q_intProductID_E_42901
for clear T1.25 wire base bulbs
Blue felt-tipped permanent marker applied several times to the bulb
while it is lit so speed up drying of the felt-tipped ink.
Yeah, I found the clears several places, usually at a high markup.
Allied was cheapest, and delivered overnight. M-C had the blue bulb
covers. (which a year ago before rice-rocket craze died out, every auto
parts store had.) But they don't have the 1 1/4 size.
'wire base' or 'wire terminal' was what the online catalogs called what
I knew as grain-of-wheat bulbs, a glass bulb with the long wires
trailing from it. Used to be dirt-common as radio dial lights and such,
and every radio shack had a whole multi-bin drawer of them. Mostly
replaced by LEDs in modern technology- I have a little plastic drawer
full of 5v LEDs from my PC-rebuilding days.
--
aem sends...
Appreciate it, but that is 4x what Allied charges.
--
aem sends...
Do you have a non-soldering-challenged friend or coworker who can do the
work for beer and pizza? It's only perhaps an hour job at most.
either of those ideas should work, also you could get some transparent
paint intended for making fake stained glass. I've used nail polish
before to "make" 57Rs for dash bulbs for old Studebakers.
If you've already got the bulb condoms why not just get a higher
wattage bulb than the ones you've already tried? any tint/paint will
reduce light output as well.
nate
Herb Harrison Oxnard Calif USA
"aemeijers" <aeme...@att.net> wrote in message
news:PdSdnd-S09w2J93Q...@giganews.com...
Thanks. I'll try 'Hobby Lobby' this weekend. (when they came in, the
ma'n'pa places went belly up.)
aem sends...
Blue INK will work much better than blue paint.
Well, here's something novel for this thread: an actual possible source
of bulbs. Try donsbulbs. This search:
http://www.donsbulbs.com/cgi-bin/r/t.pl?searchb=t1-1%2F4
turned up a shitload of T1-1/4 bulbs. Sorry, too lazy to go through
them; maybe your bulb is in there somewhere. (Or you could contact the
guy; I think it's actually some guy named Don who runs this biz.)
--
Comment on quaint Usenet customs, from Usenet:
To me, the *plonk...* reminds me of the old man at the public hearing
who stands to make his point, then removes his hearing aid as a sign
that he is not going to hear any rebuttals.
I think we have a winner here. Local Hobby Lobby didn't have the exact
stuff specified, but they did have stained glass paint in daubing
bottles, that they claimed were from the same company, although it
didn't say so on the bottle. I tried it on a couple of the wrong-size
bulbs, and it seemed to work okay. I have ordered t1.25s from Allied,
and first warm (or at least above-freezing) day, I'll open it up and
give it another try. Bulbs should be here Monday or Tues, so I'll
pre-paint enough of them and leave them stuck in the foam block sitting
in a sunny window for several days, for maximum hardness (short of over
baking. After 4 years of non-use, I'm scared to open my oven.)
--
aem sends...
> I'll
> pre-paint enough of them and leave them stuck in the foam block sitting
> in a sunny window for several days, for maximum hardness (short of over
> baking.
Just power them. They'll give off plenty of heat to bake their fresh
coatings.
If I had a bench supply (other than that old Rat Shack POS with the plus
and minus markings on the case backwards), I would. I have some wall
warts in my collection that put out 12v, but don't know how clean the
waveform is, or how much current they provide. I guess I could duct-tape
a buncha D cells together, but I'm rapidly losing interest in this
project, and they are predicting 12-15 inches of snow tomorrow night, so
I anticipate being rather tired the next few days....
--
aem sends...