Couple questions on a double wide 3.0

[Codechimp08]

Please post what you find when you do this led conversion. I was thinking of doing the same thing to mine.

On my Former 3.0 case I replaced the lower ballasts with an LED set purchased at Depot. I mounted it using two of the existing holes from ballasts. It worked great and kept the lower shelf cool too. Definitely worth it.

got the bulbs in this past weekend, sooooo easy, they are a direct replacement for the CFL bulbs as they have built in ballast bypass. They come in multiple color temperatures from cool white (yellowish, 3000k) to Bright White, 5000k). They can also function in a ballast bypass mode, so that if the ballast fails I can just rewire to bypass the ballast and remove it altogether. I got them from bulbs.com
TCP 9W 2' 5000K T8 Glass LED Bulb, Ballast Compatible

From my research:
Upside

• ease of replacement with no rewiring or replacement of the fixture
• energy savings of LED with a comparable brightness (1225) to I think 1250 for the CFL version.
• less strain on the ballast, so less likely to fail over time.
• can work in Ballast bypass mode, so with some pretty simple rewiring you can remove the ballast and run these right from the line power.

Downside

• Cost, thought I don't think $12 is too much for a nearly permanent bulb.
• with Ballast Bypass the Ballast is still drawing some current so the energy savings is not quite as good as straight up LED (about 10-20% worse).

I also added some LED strip lighting down the front which I have seen done before and I wasn't sure how I was going to like the dotted look. I actually love it and I think the case actually looks better with only those on, as it shows the various lens colors much better than the top and bottom lighting. Here are a couple of pics.
Front only

and all lights

 

[Jakeracefox]

Nice it looks good bud!

 

[Jakeracefox]

It looks lit up more in first pic for some reason

 

[SiRacer420]

That looks great. The LED strip light really lights it all up. I have it in a few of mine but still have a few to do.

Good job man.

 

[Codechimp08]

It looks lit up more in first pic for some reason

Yeah, I think it was so bright when all the lights were on that it overloaded the camera and it appears dim.

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