upgradeing to LED ligts/rocol saphire 2 grease needed

[markcw]

I have been in the process off changeing and adding LED lights in my cuddy and have now arrived at the the dash/engine gauges.

I original had 7 T10 filament bulps that supriseinly use quite alot of power when on, I recently brought 10 Blue T10 LED lamps from ebay HK for £1.50 all in, but on fitting to gauges the blue needs to be a tad brighter.

I wonderd what colour every one else has for the back lighting on there boats gauges, i have the choice now to buy 10 more in either white-red-yellow-purple-green, would be interesting to see if one colour stands for clearness.

Also required some Rocol saphire 2 saltwater bearing grease, does any one know were this can be brought in the sw area as ive been localy and it not available, online prices ebay are about £10. I have used this in my 290 leg for a while now and its proved to be good ( hinkley point use it in there saltwater pumps).

mark w

 

[shetland]

Try RS Components for the grease

 

[darren_v8]

Blue or white are usually the brightest for LEDs, avoid red if the blues are too dim. You may be able to get brighter LEDs the colour that you want. For example, if you've got LEDs that are of this inverse cone type:

you could replace them with LEDs that are the multiple SMD type:

as they tend to be much brighter (5 leds vs 1, and multidirectional). Just by switching between those LED types made a big difference in my dashboard. I currently have one of the lower blue LEDs in my mobo's speedo, I'll see if I can get a pic at the weekend.

 

[markcw]

Thanks for replies,
darren a pic would be good, i will go and get a pic tonight when dark, of the lights dials on, the ones i have are the inverse LED tybe.


As per amp draw there is a big difference with all the enterior lights on which are blue LED strips around the boat and 6x normal T10 bulps in the gauges the amp draw is 2.21, with LED installed in the dials the total amp draw is down to 1.04 amps.

 

[markcw]

Here is some pics, the dials look better on camera than by the eye. the LED srtips i had from HK are supper bright, so i hoped the the T10 would be, but there not.

 

[SolentPhill]

Hi Mark

The grease you refer to is high temp grease I use it by the box I bought it from eriks who is a distributor

If you can't find it I can let you have a tube and when you find it can replace it. Depends where you are but eriks are around a bit, there also a place in Reigate and red hill that stocks it.

Let me know

Phill

 

[markcw]

hi solentPhill.

great will be happy to pay pal you the money and post it to me, at the moment i have not found any, and want some soon as im on the boat sat at torquay watching the power boat raceing, the only place i have found it is ebay not sure if it a good price thou.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rocol-Sap...214?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item35b0be970e

Give me an idea of price if you could, thanks for the offer, im in bridgwater and there no one around me that sale it any more.

mark

 

[SolentPhill]

Pm your address will post tomorrow will sort out green stuff later date.

Phill

 

[SolentPhill]

Actually the eBay link looks ok, seller looks ok pay with pay pal and your covered, I pay around £7.50 but I get a box so it works out cheaper. It's also free postage so I guess your paying £7.75 plus postage which is good.

I don't mind either way.

Phill

There a eriks in bath

 

[darren_v8]

Here is some pics, the dials look better on camera than by the eye. the LED srtips i had from HK are supper bright, so i hoped the the T10 would be, but there not.

If they're the inverse cone type, you'll definitely get improvement by switching to the multi LED type. I've got both at home so I'll try and swap them over so you can see the difference. Even though they have more LEDs, the current drain should still be less. 5 LEDs will equate to about a 1.2 watt incandescent bulb.

 

[shetland]

Rocol aqua 2 grease would be more suitable and is available from RS
Components. www.rswww.com

 

[markcw]

Rocol aqua 2 grease would be more suitable and is available from RS
Components. www.rswww.com

Did email rocol and was told not much difference between the saphire 2 and the saphire aqua 2 both are suitable for marine application.

mark

 

[darren_v8]

Sorry, turns out that I only had 1 type of blue LED, the others were red, which are significantly darker than the blue. Also I had to try and battle against light coming in from the boat cover as it was pretty sunny, but still I've done a comparison. I set the camera to manual so none of the settings changes between images other than the amount of light leaking in from the cover. My gauge is 3" in diameter.


Click to see the bigger pic.

The 3 top images match the order of the 3 LED types in the bottom images.

The middle image is the red cone LED, as you can see, this does pretty much nothing, the photo is a fair representation of how it looks to the eye, you can't really see any red whatsoever.

The right image is the red 5 SMD LED lamp. You can see in the pic that you can see the red light coming from the guage, but it's still pretty hard to see any detail on the face. In fairness I think it looked slightly better to the naked eye.

The left image is 5 regular blue LED lamp. You can see this is significantly better than the red and that the gauge, numbers, and needle are all perfectly visible. Again, I think this one looked slightly better to the naked eye than the camera has recorded. I needed to use a shorter shutter time than was ideal, however it was the same in all 3 images.

What this image does show is that the cone LED is terrible in comparison to the multi-LED variety, I have real world experience of this in a car dashboard, starting with the red cones and changing to the red 5 SMD type which made a big improvement; At night time you can really see the difference. I would say that I believe the 5 SMD would be brighter than the 5 regular LED type, but there wouldn't be a lot in it. Either way, blue is significantly brighter.

Hope this helps.