Joel Rainville
New Member
I've built little side marker circuits for my car. It simply consists of 10 ~2V LEDs with each its own current limiting resistor, and a main 2W 68R resistor in series with the whole thing so I can tap into the existing 12-14.4V volt directly.
[Edit : I really only needed 1K resistors for each LED to let ~12ma through each one, but I didn't have enough of those, so I used what I had plenty of, which was 300R resistors for each LED, and a big 2W 68R in series with the whole circuit so that I would still get ~12ma without the need to buy 1K resistors. Not that they cost much, I just didn't feel like taking the Mazda for a trip ]
As you can tell from the picture, I've flooded the whole circuit with a thick coat of epoxy glue. The underside where the copper traces are was sprayed with 3 coats of automotive clear lacquer.
In your opinion, should this be enough to keep the circuit working at least a couple of years? The 1986 Mazda 323 it's getting attached to probably won't last that long anyway... :lol: The whole thing is gonna be held up by 10 small LED holders mounted through holes drilled in the car's front fenders. The holders have little legs that'll spread open inside the car panel when the LEDs are inserted. I plan on superglueing a few of the LEDs inside the holders once I am happy with it.
I'm also hoping the epoxy will save the solder joints from breaking after being submitted to the constant vibrations... But will the epoxy itself hold up to it?
Any ideas on how I could make this even more weather/roadproof?
[Edit : I really only needed 1K resistors for each LED to let ~12ma through each one, but I didn't have enough of those, so I used what I had plenty of, which was 300R resistors for each LED, and a big 2W 68R in series with the whole circuit so that I would still get ~12ma without the need to buy 1K resistors. Not that they cost much, I just didn't feel like taking the Mazda for a trip ]
As you can tell from the picture, I've flooded the whole circuit with a thick coat of epoxy glue. The underside where the copper traces are was sprayed with 3 coats of automotive clear lacquer.
In your opinion, should this be enough to keep the circuit working at least a couple of years? The 1986 Mazda 323 it's getting attached to probably won't last that long anyway... :lol: The whole thing is gonna be held up by 10 small LED holders mounted through holes drilled in the car's front fenders. The holders have little legs that'll spread open inside the car panel when the LEDs are inserted. I plan on superglueing a few of the LEDs inside the holders once I am happy with it.
I'm also hoping the epoxy will save the solder joints from breaking after being submitted to the constant vibrations... But will the epoxy itself hold up to it?
Any ideas on how I could make this even more weather/roadproof?