Shop Project: LED lights

There hasn’t been a whole lot going on with the car of late, but the off-season upgrades are in full swing. I’ve had a bunch of 4′ LED light fixtures to replace the fluorescent fixtures in the shop for almost a year now, but finally had the time to install them this weekend. 

I replaced 6 x 3-tube, 4′ T8 and 2 x 2-tube 4′ T12 fixtures with 10 x 4500 lumen Honeywell Linkable LED fixtures, adding 2 fixtures over the machine tools at the back of the shop where there really was never enough light

I was not expecting there to be much of a difference in pictures, but boy is the before and after striking. 

Fluorescents:

LEDs:

It’s so much less dreary, and the light output is much, much ‘cleaner’. No flicker, no more buzzing ballasts, no more needing 5 minutes for the lights to warm up when it’s cold in the shop, no more each bulb a slightly different shade of yellow / pink / white / brown.

Oh, yeah… there’s a “little” not-so-sneak-peek there to the much bigger shop upgrade happening this month.  

LED Tachometer Mount

The main reason I got the bling-o-meter is as a rudimentary yard stick for reviewing video of speed in a certain part of the track (or at least, RPM). More lights = more fast. Easy.

The problem is that it’s nearly invisible in the video, because the steering wheel is between the tach and the camera. So how to fix it?

I noticed in the video that if it were directly behind the steering wheel on the column, it would show up perfectly, so I fabbed up a quick mount to get an idea of where it should go.

I briefly considered welding to the column housing, but after consulting with a friend who generally knows much better than I (Thanks Dave!) decided that there’s too many important unknowns that could be cooked inside the column housing (plastic bushings, grease seals, etc) to risk welding directly to it. He floated the perfect solution (as usual). Inexpensive and effective: a 2-piece shaft collar.

A little time on the wire wheel cleaned off the oxide coating on the un-threaded half, a little welding, and a coat of paint, and it should work great:

A little time spent on the little things that would bother me if they were staring me in the face before each run:

And now I should be able to get some use out of it. A little before & after: