With the Torbay Trial coming up, and the prospect of possibly having to run in the dark, I had a great idea. Overcome the lack of charge on the Ulsteroid by fitting LED bulbs, easy, or so I thought!

The car being very much a special has modernish tractor headlamps, taking a 70's type bulb, so I sourced a pair of H4 adaptors and bulbs. It has modern type bayonet stop tail bulbs, again easy. So all the bulbs and bits and pieces were sourced from Ebay shops, total cost about £30.

Well, nothing is ever simple is it? First problem, the bulbs in the tail lamps were mounted sideways rather than rear facing, not suitable for the LED replacements, so a pair of new bulb holders were added to the list of bits. To cut a very long story short, after much b*****ing about, I found that the LEDs only work properly as long as there isn't a conventional bulb still in the circuit. For example, the main beam worked fine, but the dipped side of the bulb flicked on briefly as it was switched but refused to work. After much head scratching, testing, multimeter checks, testing bulbs on a battery off the car, rewiring switches, etc etc... I finally realised that it was the main beam warning light providing a false earth. Warning light bulb removed, it worked! Luckily I had a spare LED bulb which fitted the warning light, and all worked fine.

So, a couple of hours work became a couple of days, however, we now have decent head lights, with dip and main beam, for a total draw on the ammeter of about 1 1/2 Amps!

Hopefully this tale of frustration will save others time.

Stuart

Location: Teignmouth

Very interesting Stuart, thanks for the perseverance,I gave up with an additional led rear light as I couldn't get it to work on the car.You appear to have solved my problem .I will try again when my rebuild is completed.

Location: Piddle Valley

Glad it will be of use to someone Peter.

Location: Teignmouth

Hi Stuart

I have had nothing to do with LEDs, and have not fathomed your riddle. Could you expand on a little please.

Some have reported problems with electrical interference, cured with capacitors as for radio suppression.

Location: Auckland, NZ

My Opal and Rosengart run entirely on LED lighting, ok except the ignition warning lamp. I have earthed everything back directly to the battery.

Location: Oakley hants

Mr RP had Lucas 'D' lamps at the rear which have been converted with LED lighting boards by Peter at dynamoregulatorconversions.com and I'm very pleased with them. The give red tail/stop plus white number plate illumination.

For some reason the headlamps have Marchal innards and no suitable LED 3 pin 21d dipping bulbs are yet available. I have considered changing the reflectors but I don't do much night driving anyway so have retained the normal bulbs & festoon sidelights for the time being.

Location: Gard, France 30960. Used to be Languedoc-Roussillon but now it's Occitanie

Sorry Bob, I'm just reporting what happened with our car. If I fully understood what was going on I'm sure it wouldn't have taken two days to sort it out. It would seem the LEDs were finding two earths, one intended and the other through the incandescent main beam warning light bulb. I understand that LEDs are polarity sensitive.

Location: Teignmouth