What did you do IN your Garage today?

At Home Depot two bulb 48" T12 fixtures with (I assume) magnetic ballasts were only $20 and two bulb 48" T8's with electronic ballasts were $40. To me the T8's are the only way to go and worth the extra money since you get more light for less energy. I didn't shop around since Home depot is only a mile from my house.

But in my case I didn't have to change fixtures since T8 bulbs fit in T12 fixtures. The electronic ballasts were $15 each for either T12 or T8 and a ten pack of bulbs for either within a couple of dollars. So upgrading to T8 for me was only an extra $45 to replace bulbs as well as the ballasts.

Either way, unless you live in a year round warm climate stay away from magnetic ballasts and energy saver T12 bulbs. They suck.

I plugged in my VFR to the tender I got for Christmas and completed my motorized grail mill for my homebrew hobby.

Insulated the garage 3 years ago. The 50YO ceiling mounted gas heater now actually puts a dent in the cold. I spent holiday vacation doing the valves & other service on the 990. I worked up quite a sweat wrestling the gas tanks and nerf bars back onto my 990. Thank doG I don't have to put that whale back in dry dock for at least another year.

Found that Lowes had these on sale and picked up 4:


They are 4' LED lights that put out about 1800 lumens each. Not super bright, but do a nice wash of light. I was in the store planning to buy some fluorescent fixtures...but when they were $21 each plus bulbs, it made the $34.98 a little more agreeable.

While installing, I noticed that they come with a plug to allow you to connect them together, end-to-end. I put all 4 on one side of the garage with the plan to buy 4 more and end up with light on both halves of the 2 car garage.

Sure is nice actually having light and not wearing a headlamp flashlight to work on a bike.

Before/after pics? That's not a bad price for LED shop lights if they can put out some light. Beats having the original ballasts slowly die due to the cold

Finally got around to installing my heated gear controller. Put it in the left cockpit infill panel. Right infill panel has a switch controlling 2 USB ports and a 12V port.

Off:


On:

You let the secret about your glory hole slip out!!!

Changed out the foglights on my wife's 1999 10th Anniversary Miata. What a pain in the ass!

You know those little plastic clippy thingees that hold the shrouds insdie the wheelwells? Had to cut them off to remove the shrouds to get to the back of the foglights, then use the whizzer to cut the rusty bolts. Oh yea, gotta take the front tires off to get inside the wheelwell and in the process of that found out one tire had a screw in it.

Still, got it all back together by 1700.

Haha yeah. I had that photo link copied for a different forum. That sign is up on top of Slate Peak here in WA. Fixed it as soon as it loaded the page with the wrong photo.

I have two of the previous style of this light and one just like this one. The new design is brighter then the old ones. They are pretty bright for task lighting but it would take several for a garage. So far i am happy with mine.

Finally pulled the dash out of my 85 mustang project car.

I installed one of the new $40 Costco LED shop lights over my workbench, not quite as bright as I'd hoped but works OK in conjunction with the other garage lighting. Do like the instant on and full brightness and hopefully the light will not emit RFI like the florescent fixture I was using before, that was a problem when doing electronic work on amplifiers and radios. These are getting glowing (har har) reviews elsewhere so my expectations were probably a bit unrealistic...from what I've read when a store gets a pallet of them they sell out very quickly.

Is it ok to cut the plug out and wire it directly like a regular light fixture or is there more to it because its LED?

Installed some fresh rear brake pads on the Multistrada. Then cleaned the Clutch Slave cylinder.


Andrew

Pulled the snow blower out of the shed and put it in the garage!

Jim,

Doesn't your BMW come with an attachment for blowing snow??

Costco recently had the standard LED bulbs on sale. It worked out to $3/each for a 60W equivalent. We replaced every bulb inside our house with LEDs.

It looks like the LED tube fixtures are close to the proper price point. When my current carton of florescent tubes runs out I will replace the fixtures with LED. I won't miss the cold humming and flickering.

When you look back at the accelerating pace of changing technology, lighting is pretty astounding. We survived with over a century of lighting based on heating a tungsten element or high voltage glowing mercury laden gasses. Future generations will look back on the old technology much the same way we view steam engines today.

As someone said, old light bulbs are actually just heaters that generate a bit of light.

Which when heating with electric heat as many do up here in Canada contribute to heating the house.
CFL's and LED's do not save us any money in heating season.

Pulled the old tyres off the c90 rims. opened up some parts that arrived for the rebuild. ordered some paint online.

I'm getting the frame back and all the parts tomorrow so I'm having a good clean up ready this evening.