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So I plastidipped the amber reflectors with black and metallizer for gunmetal look to match trim.
also replaced amber LEDs with white on the side marker parking lights.
I also connected the china controller to the led drivers to both DRL at once on my 12V power supply and all functions work properly without any issues with flickering.
Question: if you pull the AFS fuse to get rid of the blinking AFS light on the cluster, does that disable auto leveling (up/down during startup)? I thought I read a few posts back but couldn't find it to confirm.
Question: if you pull the AFS fuse to get rid of the blinking AFS light on the cluster, does that disable auto leveling (up/down during startup)? I thought I read a few posts back but couldn't find it to confirm.
Congratalations, I almost did all this, but just didnt have enough down time for me to figure out all the pin locations and how far out I would have to space the new projector from the mount so there wasn't a huge gap around the bezel..and I got tired of soldering wires as well...
Congratalations, I almost did all this, but just didnt have enough down time for me to figure out all the pin locations and how far out I would have to space the new projector from the mount so there wasn't a huge gap around the bezel..and I got tired of soldering wires as well...
yea it’s lots of work. Took me the better part of two days to get it all together.
great job!
is it possible for you to draw up a simple diagram on the mean well wiring set up. i'm about to tackle the same thing and have the mean well driver but gonna use evo x-r projectors. thanks
great job!
is it possible for you to draw up a simple diagram on the mean well wiring set up. i'm about to tackle the same thing and have the mean well driver but gonna use evo x-r projectors. thanks
its on the driver. Two wire 12V input and two wire 350mA output. three dimming wires not used.
The one thing I just confirmed after I installed onto the car and drove for a while is that the china DRL controller is limiting my output to the Mean Well drivers. I measured a current thru the china DRL controller of 1.25A at 12V, which is only 15W. That is half the expected output with both Mean Well drivers on these DRLs. My calculations say that the 350mA thru 12 LED, 3V each should be 12.6W per side. During my Mean Well bench test I pulled 14W, the extra 1.4W is from efficiency loses of the driver.
I will do some further testing to see if I only drive one side of the DRL on the china controller, to see if I can pull the full wattage. If this is true, I may need a China DRL controller for each side. I'm only using the china controller for the DRL turn signal flashing and dimming. The Mean Well dimming (PWM or analog 0.6-1.8V) is too complicated for a 12V car application.
Nice fitment. I also found the china controller developed and had a voltage drop across the unit driving both LED drivers. This drop led to the flickering on dim output when trying to flash with the turn signal. On full bright they did not flicker. The China controller opened the ground causing the volt drop and less output. I tried to not use the ground through the controller and it disables the dimming and turn signal flash with my china controller I purchased.
Welcome to the party, you are finding one of the issue I found trying to use the china controller. The brightness is not that bright at night, when looking from a side view. This would help prevent blinding others passing by at night, therefore maybe not needing to dim the LEDs at all.
Good luck with what ever route you choose to take.
I like the bumper, where did you buy that? The paint work by the picture looks good. How did the orange peel come out matching you car paint? Did they try blending on the rest of the car or just paint just the bumper cover? This bumper cover / grille modernized the look for the front end, yeah a retro fit face lift you could say. What was needed to do the bumper cover conversion?
I just ordered a second china controller...I'm going to test a few scenarios. Run one side only to see what the amp draw is...if its around 1.25A running one side, that means that the max output. If that doesn't work, maybe jump both sides of the controller into one DRL to see if that gets full output. Either I think the internal components of the china controller only allow 15W output anyway so will need one for each side.
That is the project that prompted my 2011+ DRL Depo project. I've shown all the mods I had to do to the bumper and car to get it to fit perfect. My car has original 2007 paint except the new front bumper. Its black, so no need to blend or match anything. My paint in in perfect condition...always garaged except at work.
Originally Posted by obe1
Nice fitment. I also found the china controller developed and had a voltage drop across the unit driving both LED drivers. This drop led to the flickering on dim output when trying to flash with the turn signal. On full bright they did not flicker. The China controller opened the ground causing the volt drop and less output. I tried to not use the ground through the controller and it disables the dimming and turn signal flash with my china controller I purchased.
Welcome to the party, you are finding one of the issue I found trying to use the china controller. The brightness is not that bright at night, when looking from a side view. This would help prevent blinding others passing by at night, therefore maybe not needing to dim the LEDs at all.
Good luck with what ever route you choose to take.
I like the bumper, where did you buy that? The paint work by the picture looks good. How did the orange peel come out matching you car paint? Did they try blending on the rest of the car or just paint just the bumper cover? This bumper cover / grille modernized the look for the front end, yeah a retro fit face lift you could say. What was needed to do the bumper cover conversion?
Guy bad news, do not know why yet and will look at a total retrofit of the LEDs before I take mine back apart. But two of my twelve LEDs on the left headlight went out. Now the two that quit are one in the towards the middle and one in the inside corner. I remote started my car and saw this walking out to get in.
So the questions: are they wired in series? Or Parallel? Does these need a constant voltage driver or constant current ?
Anyway time to look at a change nevertheless.
Early retrofitted headlight before having led strips allocated across the bottom in the lenses. Retrofitter would use led strips across the bottom and sometimes would use flash back versions to flash yellow when turn signal came on.
If I make the change this flash back I will look at and how to mount them on the len or old circuit board.
Some of the optic issues I see with our circuit board mounted version is not good daytime illumination. They rely on the reflector behind to help project the light out.
Spit balling here, black out the reflector and use surface mounted led flashback to the lens. I don't know if the lens is defused but it would hind the strip and shin the light through the lens of len surfaces mounted.
Obviously, this would be a work in progress...
I wanted to let you all know two failed and you guys could make changes now before "maybe" yours quit too.
Nice clean look not having a front license plate. We can do that here unfortunately. My old toya trk had a magnet mounded front plate to cover my wrench, then remove it to use my wench. Nevertheless some liked my idea and lifted it from my trk. Since fourth I have been stopped by our the police a few times without my front plate. No tickets thank goodness.
Strange, considering that its around 1W per LED with a 350mA driver at 3V across the LED . Most LED chips these days are designed to handle this load easily.
Originally Posted by obe1
Guy bad news, do not know why yet and will look at a total retrofit of the LEDs before I take mine back apart. But two of my twelve LEDs on the left headlight went out. Now the two that quit are one in the towards the middle and one in the inside corner. I remote started my car and saw this walking out to get in.
So the questions: are they wired in series? Or Parallel? Does these need a constant voltage driver or constant current ?
Anyway time to look at a change nevertheless.
Early retrofitted headlight before having led strips allocated across the bottom in the lenses. Retrofitter would use led strips across the bottom and sometimes would use flash back versions to flash yellow when turn signal came on.
If I make the change this flash back I will look at and how to mount them on the len or old circuit board.
Some of the optic issues I see with our circuit board mounted version is not good daytime illumination. They rely on the reflector behind to help project the light out.
Spit balling here, black out the reflector and use surface mounted led flashback to the lens. I don't know if the lens is defused but it would hind the strip and shin the light through the lens of len surfaces mounted.
Obviously, this would be a work in progress...
I wanted to let you all know two failed and you guys could make changes now before "maybe" yours quit too.
[left]Yes agreed. However I do have two out of you look close enough. One might also thing these are not in series after all, because they are not like Christmas lights, one fail they all fail down the line.
Maybe if if they are parallel they need a constant voltage driver?
But anyway, on to the next retrofit and use a switchback amber / White strip and mount it in a way to shine out from the lens not up needing the reflector.
Not hopefully they will be even more brighter this time.
A work in progress ...
Either replace each led or go to a strip flashback one.
The flashback with the defused lens would be easier if the brightness would be good.
I went out and checked today, now I have a LED out on the passenger side. So something is not working well with others.
You all might consider finding the incompatibility issue before you have your start going out. It took mine a little over month to go out driving less than 1000 miles.
04-10-18, 07:56 PM
