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SWAGGER

Lighting up the big rigs

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Hi again,

I actually built my Knight Hauler last year and then put it away until I was happy enough with my painting skills before attempting to paint it. It means too much to me! :)

I practiced on static 1:24 models and then moved on to restoring a few electric guitars. Happy and confident enough now, I am going to go ahead and paint my truck and do the final assembly.

Once that is done, I think i'll start tricking it out a little, a few mods here and there. One thing I want to do is use guitar string for scale CB antennas.

On to the real point of this thread. I have seen so many youtube vids were guys have gone to town with leds as side markers and runners along trailers etc and just wondering if any of you have any tips.

All I know is that you need 3V Leds. Are there any other specifics such as low voltage or anything else? Should you use in line resistors or get leds with inbuilt resistors?

I already had a go with adding in just a couple of extra running lights on the rear bumper. They work for me, but seriously dim out the leds I piggybacked them off. I also wanted to add in extra indicators into the air cleaners, again, they work, but they seem to be sponging too much current from the existing leds.

Should I even be piggybacking or trying to run them straight from the MFC?

I have also bought a pair of amber flashers (beacons) for the roof from Germany. They come with their own control board which plugs straight in to the receiver, so I can have that on another dedicated channel, that will be cool. I currently use an Acoms 4 channel unit, but I am going to swap it out with a 6 channel, 2.4GHZ system with analog trims. This will allow me to add in some extra functions.

All that done, I will get myself a trailer, LOVING the new 40 foot container.

All advice, opinions and criticism and comments are welcome.

Much appreciated guys, thanks.

PS: Once I have finished the truck properly, I will put up some photos.

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I added 1 or 2 extra lights to my scania

SNC11069.jpg

SNC11072.jpg

Side markers on the unit ran from a spare output on the mfu (the gear indicator one iirc) and I doubled up on the trailer lights (ones at the back ignore the rest!) and they too where powered from the mfu, it seems very capable of powering more lights.....but they HAVE to be the bog standard 1.5v led 3v units just pull too much, all the lights where added in series or parallel to give maximum brightness....

The trailer lights where a different story

SNC11076.jpg

And gave me nightmares for weeks! Again all done with 1.5v LEDs and 1 9v battery!

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Interesting. Thanks for the input and really nice looking setup btw.

Ill get my hands on some 1.5V leds and have a go.

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HereĀ“s a few shots of one of my trucks with its lights on.

I am always using Servonaut electronics in mt builds, as they are way, way better than the Tamiya MFU in all aspects, however, you always have to make up your own light-systems, as Servonaut does not offer any pre-built "throw-in-the-model" systems...

Anyway, here it is. :)

post-9272-1313167931_thumb.jpg

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Wow!

That looks like a real, full size rig. Great job, thanks for sharing.

I noticed that the Servonaut kit has screw in terminals for the lights, makes adding extras a little easier.

Well, I have the MFU so have to work with that. I think I have a way forward. Had a good look at it last night and what im going to do is cut the 3 "speed indicator" lights out and parallel them into the existing amber running lights on either side of them, so that all 5 will be fixed runners. Once the MFU is set to just run them as standard and not as speed indicators, they will just stay on all the time. That leaves me with 3 extra sockets which will also be "always on" in non speed indicator mode. I will also have the 3 plugs from the speed LEDs which I can use to make up a few LED harness' that way.

Should work fine, can't see any issues as long as I use 1.5v LEDs. I want to light this sucker up good!

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The amount of LEDs on the mfu circuits was well within tolerance, there was 4 extra lights on the head/side light circuit, 2extra on the indicator and then just 3 on 2 of the gear indicator channels, the many lights in the sides, front and back of the box on the trailer where from a 9v battery in the belly locker...it's all good fun!

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