Oh come on! The weather here is not so bad - I've just come back from a few days in Co. Mayo (West Eire) - I never knew that rain a) could form a solid wall, b) that it could fall horizontally at 60mph, and c) that it never stops... In the SE of England we've had great weather for ages...
Cars have interesting electrical environments - pretty hostile. A VW is not the most subtle of vehicles or the smoothest of rides, and many UK roads are not as good as people might like. A good SMPS will sort you out fine - I've used mine in cars and they seem very reliable, though you need to keep SMPS noise of the main car electrics unless you want your radio etc, to be very unhappy... The failure modes of nixies in these environments are likely to be largely in the cathode/anode supports failing or inter-cathode/cathode- anode shorts - the tubes were not designed for this sort of abuse. Use wire-ended nixies supported on soft grommets or pinned nixies with anti-vibration mounts on the tube bases. I suspect that this approach might help a bit, but not a huge amount... Having said that, you'll probably be fine. On Oct 15, 4:29 am, Lucky <[email protected]> wrote: > I live over the water in the sunny UK...okay not so sunny! Dang I had > a look a the book on the link you provided David, problem is is led to > other books on the subject I fancied too :) looks an interesting read, > will look out for it along with some of the others I don't want to get > lots of repetition though. > > I think a small nixie clock with fading digits would suit the '55, > nice chrome adjustment knobs etc especially if it's standard/ > unmodified inc the radio. 4-6 tubes in an arc to match the speedo > binnacle maybe? > > Talking of which I'm going to need to make sure I, or anybody has a > very smoothed out power supply, a car's '12V' is all over the place. > My particular application is going into a heavily modified 72 VW > Beetle I am building for somebody with a distinct Gothic theme which > lends itself to steampunk very nicely. I want the whole > instrumentation to be nixie/neon based with Bakelite type switches > etc. (Think 'Back to the Future' steampunk style!) We're also > considering custom made valve amps on show under the bonnet, cotton > covered wires, brass terminals... Hopefully win a few shows with it. > > On 15 Oct, 03:40, J Forbes <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > David does live near the U of A. > > > I was thinking just a short time ago about how we need to get some > > dang nixies into my 55 chevy. It sure would liven it up. > > > One of these days David is going to make the nixie clock/ipod amp > > thingy for old cars, but I guess I have to do the mechanical design > > first. > > > Jim -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
