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Post by Tommy on Jun 12, 2017 11:03:29 GMT -5
Hello all,
I recently purchased 20x Chinese lighted z cars they arrived to the us within 10 days and took 4 days to get to my house, I tested them with the track power on my marklin controller and no matter what voltage the light always "bleeds" thru the cars hood and trunk, I guess the solution would be to put paint, or model putty/clay inside to prevent this problem, also does anybody repaint these cars? |
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Post by Tommy on Jun 12, 2017 11:03:43 GMT -5
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Post by dave on Jun 12, 2017 11:09:14 GMT -5
You could try painting the inside a couple of coats of flat black.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2017 11:35:28 GMT -5
First, when You open Your cars, look how they are connected ; for myself I would connect the front Led's together with the "tail" Led's (if present) in series, i.e. You have a set of 4 (or 2) Led's (warning : polarity ! ) ; You need about 9.1v voltage accross them (5.4 without tail Led's); then assuming about 15mA of current, there should be a resistor (1/4W) of at least (V-9.1)/0.015 or (V-5.4)/0.015 (or more, to reduce brightness) in series with them all, where V is the supply power (DC, more than 9.1v) ; in all cases, take a larger resistor than calculated with the formula, and don't hope to suppress the resistor by using 9.1v, because there will not be any current limitation : if there is no resistor, then Your Led's won't live very long ! For myself I learned to be careful, I have seen some rather "surrealist" things in Chinese models ...  |
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Post by markm on Jun 12, 2017 13:28:04 GMT -5
Tommy,
Alberich is correct, LEDs require a current setting resistor, otherwise they glow very brightly for a very short time. From the eBay images it's unclear how many LEDs are used or even if there is a current setting resistor. What I would suggest is to get some 1K ohm (1000 ohm) 1/4 watt resistors (banded brown-black-red) from an electronics supplier, like Radio Shack. Install the resistor between one leg of the car wiring and the power supply. Regardless of the car wiring this will decrease the brightness of the light.
Mark
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Post by Tommy on Jun 12, 2017 14:26:53 GMT -5
Thanks for the info guys! The problem now is recently over 500 radioshack stores have closed radio shack and sprint last year began sharing stores and sprint relized that wasn't so productive for the company, sprint pulled out of the deal leaving radioshack in serious financial trouble and all my local stores are closed
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Post by markm on Jun 12, 2017 14:41:44 GMT -5
You should still be able to get the resistors on the Radio Shack website. If not, I've dealt with jameco.com for decades and have been happy with the service. Or maybe you could do what I did when I was 13...salvage a resistor out of an old piece of household electronics.  There's is also a company that sells, LEDs, flasher circuits, etc. for model railroading that sells the resistors. You could also check with stores that repair RC equipment. Mark |
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Post by neverland on Jun 12, 2017 19:45:08 GMT -5
You can also coat your LEDs with paint to minimize the intensity if you can't solve it electronically.
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Post by tjdreams on Jun 12, 2017 20:24:02 GMT -5
Radio-shack isn't the only place to buy resistors Their are thousands of places on line. Digi-Key, Mouser, eBay, even some of the train shops like model train stuff carry LED's and Resistors.
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Post by markm on Jun 13, 2017 10:12:11 GMT -5
Another way to control where the light goes is to use a sleeve of heat-shrink tubing on the LED.
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