There is more space on lockers, so lamps there can be a bit longer then 1". Problem with these lamps is that they cost $5-6 apiece for red ones and double that for any other color. Versions with 3 LEDs (probably too bright for our application) cost triple that. Ouch!
To replace all light bulbs on a panel and lockers one needs 13 lamps, 4 red, 6 green, 1 blue and two white. Of course, white LEDs can be used everywhere, but if your plastic cover is fading, buying properly colored light bulb will produce desired color of light even if cover is faded. I looked a bit more and found some cheaper LED-based replacement bulbs. Superbrightleds.com sells them. Red ones go for $1, other colors for double that. They are however too long to fit. After some
scratching I figured the dome is really solid plastic. So I took belt sander and took-off 1/4" of the plastic dome. Takes about 10 seconds per lamp. That left rough surface on what is now "lens" so I polished it with 800-grit sandpaper.
Place it onto the flat hard surface flip the bulb upside down and polish it that way. Very fast method. That milky liquid used to polish faded plastic headlamps can be used to polish the ground surface even further, but even without it, it works just fine. To find those lamps, go to superbrightleds.com web site, go to upper right corner and select:
LED lights->RV, Marine, Landscape-> BA9s and BA7s LED bulbs. Then choose BA9s Lamps
and select BA9s-x LED bulb model.
On this one you can choose color and voltage. Choose 28V and colors you want. One note about polarity. Incandescent lamps are by definition bipolar, or in layman's terms, polarity does not matter. Both DC and AC voltage will heat the wire (will be a bit dimmer with AC), so that does not matter either. For a LED-based lamp to be true incandescent replacement, it must work just as an incandescent lamp it replaces. So, all these LED-based replacement bulbs contain full-wave (Graetz) rectifier (4 diodes) and one resistor in series with LED. So polarity is a non-issue for these lamps and they work with both AC and DC voltages. Hence they are all marked xxVAC, xx being nominal voltage.
Superbrightleds has a reasonable shipping of $5 so for about $27 and about 1/2 hr. of your time, you can replace all light bulbs on your dashboard.
So, I guess this moves about 0.01% of Pinz into the 21st century. 99.9% to go.
I hope someone finds this useful.
Disclosure: No position in superbrightleds.com
Left, CML bulb, 3-LED superbrightleds lamp (not for Pinz dashboard use), one-LED BA9s and same lamp modded for Pinz.
