Replacement LED Lightbulbs

[markronz]

I am working on restoring my Grandma's old bowling machine.  See the two attached pictures if you're curious.   It's in pretty good condition overall.   At the moment I am looking to replace the light bulbs inside of it.  Do any of you know how I would go about finding out if there is an LED equivalent lightblub for either of these bulbs?

One type is a #55 mini bulb like this one:
http://www.elightbulbs.com/GE-25576-55-Miniature-Automotive-Light-Bulb

One type is a #63 mini bulb like this one:
http://www.elightbulbs.com/Eiko-40830-63-Miniature-Automotive-Light-Bulb

I don't even know where to start to look to find an equivalent LED bulb, if there even is one.   The base of both bulbs has those two little notches that hold the bulbs in, so I'm assuming the LED, if there is one, would also need to have those two little notches.

If you don't think there are any, I can just use the normal bulbs, but I guess when available I like to replace with LED's.  Thanks for the help!

[PL1]

The term you are looking for to describe the little nubs and notches that lock this size and type bulb into place is "mini bayonet mount".

The first two places I look for bulbs are Paradise and Twisted Quarter.

At this time, Paradise doesn't carry any 7v bulbs with bayonet mount.

Twisted Quarter has the #63 bulbs here or here.

They also have has the #55 bulbs here or here,

The only thing I found for a #55 LED replacement bulb was this -- you might want to sit down and swallow that sip of Pepsi before you do a price check.       Disclaimer: I've never done business with this company.


Scott

[mgb]

I have looked into led replacements for the 55's before and have also found some crazy prohibitive prices.
I checked the usual pinball resources that carry some led replacements and found nothing.

maybe you can pour through the many products at superbrightleds.com and find something. they have a lot of replacement leds for different bulbs and they have base adaptors for bayonet to wedge and what not.

[markronz]

Thanks so much for the info guys.  Considering I need a quantity of 45 of the #55's, there's no way I'm paying $6 a piece for an LED one!   I kinda figured as much, but wanted to make sure before I bought the standard bulbs.   So I'm going to go ahead and just order the standard bulb replacements from Twisted Quarter.   Thanks again for the help!

[ChadTower]

Don't give up.  Go to ebay and search, keep looking.  Arcade/pinball specific vendors charge huge markup on LEDs.  If you do some looking around you will probably find someplace to get them way cheaper.  Also check to see if there are any physically equivalent bulbs to 55 and 63.  It's common to find there are more than one wattage at a particular size and that you can mix and match them.

[lilshawn]

i'm sure you can order something off ebay for dirt cheap.

have you any idea what the actual voltage is? 6 volt led bulbs are a little more common and cheaper.

[markronz]

Thanks guys but I already did order 60 new light bulbs.  I just went with the traditional ones, like the ones I linked earlier at Twisted Quarter.   I just wasn't sure how to tell if an LED had an equivalent base, or would work replacing a 7v bulb.  So for the time being I decided just to go with the old school ones.   If someone ever 100% find a compatible replacement, let me know, but other than that, I'll stick with the old school ones.  Thanks anyway.

[Nephasth]

For future reference, the 55s are a ba9s base and the 63s are a ba15s base. Most of the time, LED bulbs with these bases are 12V bulbs. I just ordered a couple hundred ba9s and 10 ba15s bulbs for my pin. I was able to get the ba9s in the voltage I wanted (6V) but I had to get 12V bulbs for the ba15s, so we'll see how those look at half voltage...

[markronz]

I am correct then in assuming that if my normal bulbs are 7v that I could NOT use an LED that's 6v?  I would have to probably go with a 12v bulb as well?  Or are there other steps in between, like 8v and etc?

[Nephasth]

My assumption would be that the game actually runs those lights on 6V, but the bulbs are rated at 7V. Best thing to do would be to check the voltage at the socket to verify what voltage the game is running those lights at. But yes, you don't want an LED bulb rated for a lower voltage than what will be driving it.

[markronz]

Ok.   Yeah I'll have to figure out how to work my multimeter.  This is the multimeter I have:



Do you think you could give me some tips on which ports to hook up the wires to, and what I should have the dial set to, to properly measure the voltage?

[markronz]

You have given me hope on this again.  Knowing the proper size base to search for is making searching for LEDs infinitely easier.  Just wish I hadn't ordered all those normal bulbs first.  If anyone wants to buy them from me, let me know

But I did a search and could not find any 6V bulbs really for those base sizes on eBay, but I found plenty of 12v bulbs.   I decided to purchase one of each the ba9s and ba15s LED bulbs for testing.  We'll see how they look at half power.  If they look better, or look equivalent, I might just end up buying the rest of them anyway.   As much as I hate to have wasted money on the other traditional bulbs, I just really want to preserve the back glass, since I'll never find another one, so I am thinking that LED bulbs will be cooler temperature-wise.  Long term preservation rules out over a one time loss of $25 for bulbs.

All the same, if you could still give me some tips on the multimeter it'd be appreciated, so I can confirm whether or not it actually works on 6V, 7V or 12v or what.

[Nephasth]

Set your meter to DCV 20. Make sure the red lead is in the V-Ohm-mA hole and the black lead is in the COM hole of your meter. With the game on (and knowing the socket you're testing should be on), and bulb out of the socket, put one lead on the center terminal (round) inside the socket (be careful not to create a short with your test lead between the terminal and casing of the socket), and one lead on the edge of the socket. That will give you your voltage reading. If it reads as a negative voltage, that's just because your test leads are backwards, just drop the negative sign and this is your voltage.

Here's some white ba9s LEDs I bought in 6V: http://www.ebay.com/itm/200741905531 He also has other colors, just search "6V" in his store.

Here are the ba15s bulbs I went with (for the flashers on the pin): http://www.ebay.com/itm/140848229464 Not quite sure how they'll perform until I get them though, but for $7 for 10 I'm willing to try them out.

[markronz]

Great!  Thanks so much for the information.   I think I limited ebay to only search the US, that's why I wasn't seeing some of these results.   I ordered a few 6v bulbs too for the BA9S one's anyway.   So we'll see which look better the 6v or 12V.   The BA9S ones are the more important ones by far since those are what is behind the back glass.  The BA15S ones would be nice to be LED too, but I'm less concerned about those as they just light up the pin area mostly.

And now we wait...   

[markronz]

Just thought I'd update this for completeness.   Sadly I tried out 3 different LED bulbs, some 6v and some 12v.   Sadly they didn't really work for my project.  So I've settled on just using the standard bulbs for this.  I've already replaced them all with new ones.   The LEDs just didn't light up the back glass right.

you can see the pics in the "Light Bulb Replacement" section, towards the bottom of this link:
http://www.markronsman.com/BowlingMachine/BowlerMachine.htm#20130125Update

Thanks again for all the help at this anyway!