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MG TD TF 1500 - Insturment panel indicator lights

Why do these lights have the fine wire coil on the outside of the housing? Can it be eliminated? Looks like some kind of resistor to change voltage to me, but why? Just trashed one but may be able to solder it back together. Thanks
RER Rosa

Rosa - The sockets with the nichrome wire wound around them body use a 2 volt bulb (the type used in some of the old flash lights). You are correct that the wire is resistor wire to drop the voltage to the bulb to 2 volts. Eliminating the wire will require 12 volt bulbs and if the stay on for very long, they will melt the plastic lenses. The 2 volt lights are a # 223 or 233, the 12 volt bulbs are 1446. Cheers - Dave
D W DuBois

It should be possible to replace the wire & use a suitable resistor to drop the voltage which would be much more durable than the flimsy, easily damaged resistor wire. Some of the EE's here should be able to indicate the resistor value & colour code (if they are still made that way these days?) Cheers
Peter TD 5801
P Hehir

Rosa,

You can rewind and solder the wire if the insulation is in good condition (mine had rotted away.)
Otherwise, you can replace the resistor wire with a discrete 68 ohm resistor in series with the lamp. That way you can still use the original 2.2 volt bulbs.

John

52 TD
J Scragg

See http://www.ttalk.info/Tech/Indicators.htm for a bit on this topic. Bud
Bud Krueger

Has anyone tried using led bulbs? Bright and run cool. Is there an LED replacement for the original socket? PJ
Paul S Jennings

Moss sell LED positive or negative ground instrument lights (12 V) that are really worth the cost. They do not sell any 2.0 V bulbs for the indicators
Don Harmer

LEDs wonīt work at 2 Volts (or maybe just...), and if they are for bipolar use, it means they have a rectifier built in, which normally takes another 1.5V off. So a minimum of approx. 4 V is needed. On the other hand, LEDs prewired (with a resistor) for 12V will start lighting up at about half the Voltage and are fairly constant in their brightness over their working range.
It should be easy to replace the indicator bulbs with Instrument LED bulbs (the socket is E10, I believe) in the right colour and remove the resistor wire on the sockets.

You should also be able to get low power 12V bulbs that can be used permanently without the wire. Less than 1 Watt should be ok, and the only one thatīs on for a longer period would be the low fuel warning anyway.

Best Regards
Mike
Mike Fritsch

Here are a couple of pictures of how I rebuilt my indicator lights. As always, I didn't take enough pictures but this first one shows one unit that is coming apart apon dismantling and the next picture in the next postshows how (after breaking the wire), I rewrapped the wire and held it in place to be able to solder the end. Now, if they will only work.

I have not posted in a while but I read the BB almost every day. Thank you all for making yourselves available with such great insight.

Patrick

Well, I can't seem to be able to resize the pictures. I will keep trying and get them here later.
Patrick Earles

Ok, worked out the problems. Picture #1.
Patrick Earles

Picture #2


Patrick Earles

Well, let's try picture #1 again.


Patrick Earles

Patrick, that looks good. If the connector is brass and well clean, it should solder nicely.

Rgds, Mike
Mike Fritsch

Nichrome Wire is very difficult to solder. When I used it, years and years ago, I needed to sliver plate the end just to get the solder to stick.
It is best crimped.

When I repaired my lights I made some tiny brass crimps. I taped them up.

My lamps then worked fine.

Jim B.





JA Benjamin

This thread was discussed between 13/11/2014 and 14/11/2014

MG TD TF 1500 index

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