Prius C Shift Lever Light

I think you are a bit confused here.

An LED IS a diode.
The only ones that are "non-polar" are ones with a tiny little power supply included......which increases the price.

The power supply provides a stable voltage and should greatly increase the life.

There is no practical reason to spend money on extra diodes just to make it non-polar.
Actually, bridging a second led with the polarity reversed inside the same package probably would be cheaper......but still not worth the cost or trouble.

 

I am not confused. Instead, you are not well informed about electricity and existing products:

Full-wave rectification

Numerous units on the market include this four-diode full wave bridge so that consumers can install these lamps with either polarity of DC (quite handy for sockets with unknown polarity), or even on low voltage AC, such as on common yard lights.

 

So at the end of the day:

Has anyone else replaced it? Was the bulb the only issue? Who did it? How much did it cost? What bulb did you use? Do you have faith in the work? Did you get a diagnostic for the entire car? Have you also experienced it?

 

Money is money. Safety is safety. I couldn't and still can't do it myself. Someone else could. I looked around. Asked my neighbor Gabe by the way he works as one of the techs/mechs at a Toyota dealership and has for over a decade (he's a hybrid specialist), my boyfriend who rebuilds engines as a hobby, my college roommate who is an electrical engineer, my father regarding cost for labor and the amount of work done AND the fact I didn't see anyone else posting about how they fixed it seemed that $140 was reasonable if only for the amount of research I did. If I did all the research at $12/hr (minimum wage in Portland) for 8 hrs (both online and in hounding people), then bought the parts (with an extra in case I fudged up), proper tools needed, paid for a therapist to convince me not to worry I did it wrong and do a full diagnostic of the entire system....

 

Also it was ONLY $140. It's not that much. My hair appointments are more than that.

 

Also a Subaru isn't a Prius C.

 

No worries. It's a cool idea

 

The 'safety' of a gear shift indicator must be an individual thing. After decades of driving vehicles with no indicator display of what gear it was in -- some even had the pattern completely worn off the gear shift knob -- I just didn't develop a habit of looking for gear indicators.

As am I.

That is how my preference for LEDs over incandescents was developed.

Clearly, different people live in different money worlds.

I preferred to retire on a reasonable schedule, so I could go play outside. And did.

 

That is not a good reason to add extra diodes either.
The LED itself will conduct on one part of the AC voltage wave and not conduct on the other part.

And your ASSumption about my electrical qualifications is quite WRONG.

 

If you want LED, these may be the best option.

 

... in your personal opinion.

But a great many manufacturers and vendors are actually doing it on the products they build and sell, and are profiting from it. The convenience and labor savings of not having to determine the polarity of random lamp sockets has a significant value, and small integrated bridge rectifiers are dirt cheap.

Non-Polarized LED Bulb. How'd They Do That??

The rectifier is still needed to prevent destruction from reverse breakdown during the other part where the LED isn't meant to actively conduct.

Your lack of familiarity with full-wave or bridge rectifiers in these common products pretty much verifies it.

And your vulgar capitalization, after making the same assumption about my so-called "confusion", further illustrates why your first login got banned.

 

An extra diode is NOT needed. An LED that is presented a forward voltage which will make it light up without blowing it up, will automatically block that same voltage presented in the reverse direction. That's what a diode does.

And I didn't say that extra parts are not ever added.......for various reasons. What I did say was that in it's most basic operation, the extra parts are not NEEDED.

And there you go ASSuming things again.
My "first login" did not bet "banned". It was damaged in a system crash.

 

All diodes have a maximum allowed reverse voltage rating. For LEDs, this is frequently (but not always) too low for the application, so additional parts are then added to protect it.

Diode Ratings | Diodes and Rectifiers | Electronics Textbook

When protected by a bridge rectifier, this even produces extra value-added functionality. And many LED lamp products are already doing so, despite your earlier misguided statements of "no practical reason", "but still not worth the cost or trouble", and "not a good reason".

You are changing your story from posts #41 and #49, where you were very clearly underinformed.

So that is your story, and you are sticking to it?

For your own system crash, simply use the forgotten password feature. For a website crash, simply ask a moderator to fix it. Those are why I am skeptical of that excuse.

 

These window cling sunshades are fantastic. I've never seen anything like it around here. But hey, it's nice to meet a fellow citizen of the Empire.

WP_20180609_11_12_46_Pro by dubit posted Jun 9, 2018 at 11:58 AM

 

btw - as a casual "passer by" in this thread, I must say the discussion has become a bit ridiculous. If anyone is curious, the quote above is the original post - and the individual hasn't been seen since July 4th, 2018. People on this site continually argue amongst themselves about the most trivial things for pages... Gasoline, headlights, taillights, tire pressure. I'd wager someone has probably even argued about the color of the headliner.

Please.... Think about this before posting. {end of rant, but am expecting someone to rant back, because this is PriusChat sadly}

 

I don't owe you an explanation......or anybody else for that matter.

This happened at a time when Danny was still in control but didn't have the time or the expertise to fix the problem.
The entire site was messed up and my problem was NOT one of not being able to login.
This went on for several days or weeks (I don't remember exactly) and when the basic problem with the site was fixed, my "user" still was trashed.

Happy holidays.

 

I replaced the light for the PRND area. It is a #74 bulb. Its pretty forward on how to replace. remove center cover, remove shifter cover and the bulb is right there.

 

thank you all. my new 2013 has no light and i knew there should be one. looks easy enough with those diagrams. i will try and get a picture as i disassemble because i don't think anyone has done that.

Just fyi i have had problems with leds before replacing them with dash lights. 1) lots of leds are cheap/poor quality and fail soon 2) the dimmer on the dash is not always compatible, not always putting out the voltage that the led likes, whereas incandescent is just a bit dimmer if you got some voltage issues. 3) heat and cold and moisture in a car can be extreme sometimes on leds which are more sensitive. My two cents. I have had mixed success in other vehicles. ill probably go incandescent here.

 

So this was an extremely easy repair. I saw the note about the sift column cover being held down with clips, and got my trim removal tools ready. I did not even need them. A quick pull was enough to release the shroud with the EV button on it.




4 clips hold in the cover for the shifter. I gently pried them and lifted the shifter cover away to expose the bulb.



trying to get the clearance to put in the new bulb, i eventually had to remove the cup holders. came out with little effort and no tools as well.



i then removed the bulb carefully with needle nose pliers. The green skin came off and i retained that.



the 74 bulb was a little bit bigger than the stock bulb, or maybe i didnt have the angle precisely right at first. So it was a bit hard to get in the first time.

I plugged the switches back in and started the car to see if the new bulb worked. It did not. So i pulled the bulb out again and splayed out the metal contacts (filament) on the bottom of the bulb. It was then able to make contact. Hard to see the actual light output in the daytime so i will wait till tonight to take another look.



reassembly was very easy as well. I took some time to clean out the under shifter area of crumbs.

Total time on repair was maybe 15 minutes. Was impressed at how easy everything came apart with minimal effort. I suspect it has been apart before though but dont see any weird previous owner wires in there. Car has 330k kms