[DeTomaso] Fw: Hot Dimmer Switch

Art Stephens artstephens at charter.net
Tue Mar 20 13:55:08 EDT 2007


> Ken,
>     I think you may be on to something here.  I believe the dimmer 
> originally did not control the lights to the speedo and tach?  I'm 
> thinking the later cars had a second dimmer to handle that?  My new speedo 
> and tach have two bright lights apiece that my dimmer did not have to 
> handle before. After testing,  I can see that one bulb per unit will be 
> plenty,  if that isn't good enough,  I'll probably pull the bulb out of 
> the light that covers the gauges and climate controls.  It just doesn't 
> seem like that giant rheostat should get that hot?  I've got a 300 watt 
> halogen lamp in the living room and the rheostat never gets that hot and 
> it is handling like 20 times the juice?
> Thanks,
>
> Art
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ken Green" <kenn_green at yahoo.com>
> To: "Thomas Tornblom" <Thomas.Tornblom at hax.se>; "Tomas Gunnarsson" 
> <guson at home.se>
> Cc: "Art Stephens" <artstephens at charter.net>; <detomaso at realbig.com>
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 1:26 PM
> Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Hot Dimmer Switch
>
>
>>      You can make a very efficient switched capacitor or switched 
>> inductor power supply, but the ones I have seen don't have a knob to vary 
>> the voltage out.  I guess there are really cheap processors available and 
>> I suppose some may have inputs for a pot and they can be programmed to 
>> control a switched power supply and thereby control the voltage output 
>> based on the pot setting.  Seems like overkill?
>>
>>        If the lights are too bright, maybe try dimmer (lower current) 
>> bulbs first, and see if that drops the power dispated in the dimmer 
>> switch enough?  The heat you're feeling should just be proportional to 
>> the sum of the currents through all of the light it is controlling.
>>
>>  Ken
>>
>> Thomas Tornblom <Thomas.Tornblom at hax.se> wrote:
>>  Tomas Gunnarsson skrev:
>>> Art,
>>>
>>> There is no efficiency gain to be had by switching from one rheostat ot 
>>> another. They all have the same power loss at a given output voltage.
>>
>> Unless one use some modern switching thing.
>>
>>>
>>> Tomas
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>>> From: "Art Stephens"
>>> To:
>>> Sent: den 19 mars 2007 07:45
>>> Subject: [DeTomaso] Hot Dimmer Switch
>>>
>>>
>>>> I ran for years with no dimmer switch for the gauges. After installing 
>>>> the new AutoMeter speedo and tach, I hooked up the dimmer switch again 
>>>> because the new units were so bright. Now that dimmer runs hot. It gets 
>>>> so hot that I'm pretty sure if given enough time, the bezel will be too 
>>>> hot to touch. My main concern here is fire. Has anyone out there 
>>>> replaced their rheostat with something a little more efficient?
>>>>
>>>> Art
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>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Real life: Thomas Törnblom Email: Thomas.Tornblom at Hax.SE
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