It's been a few years since anyone commented on LED tail light replacement.
I bought this red tail light pair from Amazon for $13 with free Prime shipping: https://goo.gl/djppSS
This is the title to search for in case the link goes stale: "LUYED 2 x 650 Lumens Super Bright 1157 3014 54-EX Chipsets 1157 2057 2357 7528 LED Bulbs Used For Tail Lights,Brake Lights and Turn Signal Lights,Red"
They plugged in and worked very well on my 74 Spider. Much brighter than the incandescent ones and of course at a lower wattage.
FYI, The first set of bulbs I bought on Ebay did not work for those of you that may try that approach.
So do your signals flash at the correct rate or faster? The higher resistance/lower current flow of some LED's causes the flasher relay to "think" there is a burnt out bulb. Also do your lights look red? I've seen some that are so bright they make the tail lights look pink.
Hi Paul,
The flashing rate is the same as before. The red tail marker light and (brighter) red tail brake light look red to my eyes.
They are much brighter than stock and should increase visibility.
FYI, for those that have not changed these bulbs, there are no tools needed. Open the trunk and hand loosen the 4 protruding screws. The plastic lenses will come off the back end if gently tugged on.
I bought an electronic flasher relay so I could use led bulbs. Trouble is now if one turn light is not working they still flash at correct rate. I had a ground corroded on front right. The only thing to watch out for is buying a bulb to big to put in housing hole. In my car everything is 1156 blub
Guys, I was just about to order these, but the bulb application guide in the stickies specifies 1156 bulbs for our cars. These indicate that they are 1157 (double filament) . which is the correct light for our cars?
The Red 1157 is a stop/tail lamp with 2 staggered side pins and 2 filaments. That is what I replaced above with LEDs.
The 1156 is used for the turn signals. It is a single filament, single contact bulb. The final color is amber/orange colored.
I haven't tried replacing that yet. The same manufacturer makes this bulb below which includes load resistors to address the fast flashing issue. Let us know if someone tries them: https://www.amazon.com/LUYED-Lumens...499694011&ie=UTF8&qid=1481060004&sr=8-13&th=1
I placed an order today for 2 x Red LED Tail/Brake lights and 4 x Amber Turn Signal lights (front & back), I'll report back early next week on the result
There is another thread currently running regarding changing out bulbs in gauges. Dim gauge lights in 83 spider veloce. You may want to check that one out too. As for tail lights, the set that ihart bought should work well. You can get them even brighter, around 900 lumens, from amazon as well. The thing with LED's as far as color goes, you should buy the color for the lens you are using. A white LED with a red lens will wash out the color, as Kcabpilot suggests.
If anyone is interested, I also installed LED's in my parking lights for greater presence. I use them as daytime running lights as there are way too many aggressive/distracted drivers in Connecticut and if I'm going to get hit, I'd rather it be in my minivan than my Alfa. Check them out as well:
LUYED 2 X 1700 Lumens Extremely Bright 1156 4014 102-EX Chipsets 1156 1141 1003 7506 LED Bulbs,Xenon White(Brightest LED in market)
I put 600 lumen bulbs in the front turn signal lights and will also do the red and amber tail bulbs.
I can't find these on UK sites but came across similar looking ones. However one of the reviews said "gets very hot when on constantly, keep away from plastic" ! The reviewer as a result was using them only in the indicators so it wasn't a problem as they weren't on long enough to get hot. Do your side lights get hot?
My understanding of LEDs is that they should run cooler so I was a bit surprised.
Also, I can't remember if the bulb pins are 180 or 150 degrees offset?
180 degrees. And LEDs *should* run cooler, except when they contain a resistor to activate a flasher relay. It would be better to buy ones without the resistor, and just get the electronic flasher relay. Or put your own resistor in-line, just away from the plastic lamp housing.
EQUIVALENT LEDs run cooler than their incandescent counterparts but that's not what we're talking about here. Stock bulb is 21w which puts out ~120 lumens. An equivalent LED would be only 1 or 2 watts, so 10 or 20 times cooler. But here we're talking about putting in a 1750 lumen bulb - 15 times brighter (I agree it's good to be seen, but holy crap!). I didn't see a wattage for that lamp but I think it'll be around 20w - same as the original more or less. LEDs concentrate their heat in a smaller area so they can have heat dissipation problems. If you get LED bulbs for your home they'll often have big finned heatsinks on them to take care of this problem but these little automotive bulbs don't have that so yeah, they're gonna get hot.
I would think a 650 lumen LED would be more than sufficient (5 times brighter than stock) and not give you the heat problems of these eyeball burning 1750 or 2500 lumen bulbs. Putting a 1750 or 2500 lumen headlight bulb in would be illegal in most states. I'm not sure what the laws are on tail and turn signal brightness.
I ride bicycles a lot and get into a similar discussion about bikes. Yes, you really need to be seen for safety but I don't personally think blinding drivers is the answer (the answer to this I usually get in the bicycle community is "screw those cagers" - I reckon I might get similar comments about SUV drivers here).
The assumption I was making was that the LED lamps would be brighter by some factor, but overall the overall power consumption would be lower. I was not even thinking about equivalent power consumption LED replacements. The idea of putting in bulbs that are 10x brighter than stock doesn't make any sense to me at all. 3-5x? Sure, seems reasonable. 10-15x? No way.
I would think a 650 lumen LED would be more than sufficient (5 times brighter than stock) and not give you the heat problems of these eyeball burning 1750 or 2500 lumen bulbs. Putting a 1750 or 2500 lumen headlight bulb in would be illegal in most states. I'm not sure what the laws are on tail and turn signal brightness.
I ride bicycles a lot and get into a similar discussion about bikes. Yes, you really need to be seen for safety but I don't personally think blinding drivers is the answer (the answer to this I usually get in the bicycle community is "screw those cagers" - I reckon I might get similar comments about SUV drivers here).
I don't know what the standard is here. I can't find a specific call out in the state law on-line. Plenty of stuff about headlights, but not too much about the other lights. And nothing at all about how bright they are.
Riding bikes is another story. I have commuted by bike in the past, and my idea was multiple steady and flashing red lights behind, one flashing white lamp on my helmet facing front, and two steady white lights on the handlebars to illuminate the road surface, one near, and one far. And never aimed up into car drivers' eyes. I rarely commute by bike any more, but I do appreaciate the folks who want to be seen. Contrasted to the fool the other day who was wearing dark clothes, had no reflectors at all installed anywhere on his bike, and was saved from being crushed under my wheels by the fact that his tires had some reflective logo, and his shoelaces were white.
I would think a 650 lumen LED would be more than sufficient (5 times brighter than stock) and not give you the heat problems of these eyeball burning 1750 or 2500 lumen bulbs. Putting a 1750 or 2500 lumen headlight bulb in would be illegal in most states. I'm not sure what the laws are on tail and turn signal brightness.
I was thinking along the same lines. I like the idea of putting bright bulbs into the side lights and using them as daytime running lamps. I get very frustrated, though, by cars with overbright rear lights, particularly when queuing at my local level crossing for 10 minutes with the guy in front using his foot brake (and therefore brake lights) instead of the parking brake.
I think the overbright bulbs at the rear would probably be illegal over here but there isn't much chance of the police doing anything about it.
Karl (on the AOC forum) is a LED expert and he's not keen on them being used in cars as they are very directional - he convinced me it was much better to make sure the connections are good, keep your reflectors clean and shiny and use standard bulbs, I fitted 20w "sidelight" bulbs and lined the reflectors on the sides and indicators with silver foil and they do shine pretty brightly - I would really like to fit a high level brake light but cant find any way of fitting one without it looking crass and ugly on my S2... any suggestions?
The problem with an S2 is that there is absolutely nothing that could be considered "high" on the rear end of them. But maybe a little LED strip light on a tiny stalk coming up from the trim around the top? You can get some very compact LED systems that are quite bright. These guys have (perhaps literally) a million options: https://www.superbrightleds.com
edit: Brainstorming this a little. My first thought was a led strip right below the trunk lid. That would get it centered but still below the bumper height of a lot of SUVs. But you could make it fairly wide and I'm sure you could find a simple Instructables project for making it animated to catch attention. And didn't US S4s come with a trunk-lid mounted "pod" for a high mount? Like the one in this picture:
I am using an older style led blubs the yellow is equal to 2 to 5 watt (9 led) and white 15-20 watt (19 led). Everybody comments they are brighter than stock. Shown with lens off.
I've tried the bulbs with LEDs only pointing forwards, like those in post #22 by alfabeach.
Because they only shine outwards, you don't get much multiplier or spreading factor from the reflector, and you end up with a very bright, but tiny, dot in the centre of the light unit. Better to buy bulbs with LEDs all around, as shown in earlier posts.
I bought this red tail light pair from Amazon for $13 with free Prime shipping: https://goo.gl/djppSS This is the title to search for in case the link goes stale: "LUYED 2 x 650 Lumens Super Bright 1157 3014 54-EX Chipsets 1157 2057 2357 7528 LED Bulbs Used For Tail Lights,Brake Lights and Turn Signal Lights,Red"
Today I finally had the time to install these bulbs which I too ordered from Amazon based on ihart's recommendation.
All I can say is Wow!
The improvement in brightness is dramatic, as others have said and shown in pictures. These 650 Lumen bulbs make my 74 Spider's tail lights look like those of a modern car.
For others who plan to do this swap, once you have the light assembly open you should:
Clean the ground wire connectors, washers if present, and nuts
Clean the tail light reflectors and the red lenses
I painted the reflectors on our sons's GTV 6 using Spaz Stix (yep-- that's the name!!) chrome aluminum spray paint, available at most hobby stores. Google it and you'll see many modelers like the bright finish to replicate polished aircraft aluminum. Makes a ton of difference in reflectivity.
I installed the red 650 lumens parking/brake LEDs as described earlier in this thread. While they are brighter than the regular bulbs (LED on the right), it's wasn't a huge difference for me. My incandescent bulbs were new as of a few months ago and I had cleaned the grounds and cleaned up the reflectors so I'm not necessarily surprised.
What did make a difference was the turn signal LEDs. I have amber turn signal lenses so I used the LUYED 2590 lumens LEDs (no external resistor required). I was too lazy to stitch the videos together but if you start them both at the same time you'll get a pretty good comparison.
Hard to judge from a picture but do you not consider that there is a point where they may be TOO bright? Because if they are approaching the level of brake or rear fogs then they really can be an irritation to the person following you. I know LED technology has given us super bright lights but in some cases like police and other emergency vehicles it has been taken to such an extreme that you can't actually look at them and they even wash out the hazard by blinding the driver. I know the idea is to be seen but my gosh yes, I see you already, enough!
With modern cars there seem to be two unintended mistakes by drivers. Either they are driving with front and rear fog lights lit on a perfectly clear night or they are driving with just their DRL's on completely unaware that they have no tail lights because their instruments are LED and are lit up all the time.
In town, not sick, no rain, so I got pictures tonight of new LED taillight bulbs. Turned on the 2014 Forester's lights for comparison. Although I do not have before pictures with original incandescent bulbs, pictures below show that these 650 lumen LEDs have reasonable brightness levels.
Based on my happy experience replacing tail light incandescent bulbs with LEDs, I decided to also replace my rear turn signal and back up bulbs with LEDs as well.
Based on reviewing many LED listings on Amazon I think that these AUTOUS90 ones with 54 SMDs (Surface Mount Device) are a newer generation and are thus, hopefully, better in some way than previous generation(s). It seems that older generation LEDs use fewer, larger SMDs. Their cost was also attractive.
I did not order amber LEDs for the front turn signals and running lights, because I am more concerned with being seen from behind. Also, amber LEDs were a fair bit more expensive than white and red LEDs back in December when I ordered these parts. My thinking at the time was that I would install the rear LEDs and eventually get around to replacing the front turn signals and running lights with LEDs.
However, now I think i will leave the front incandescent bulbs as-is. Why? After installing the new rear turn signal LEDs, the turn signals flashed at the normal rate. There was no rapid flashing. After thinking for a moment I realized that the front turn signal incandescent bulbs were providing sufficient resistance in the circuit, so extra resistors are not needed.
Moral of the story: If you only replace one of the two (front or rear) turn signal bulbs on a side of the car, you do not need an additional load resistor. (I did not do the circuit analysis, but welcome confirmation from anyone who does.)
Conjecture: I bought four load resistors under the assumption that one is needed per LED. However, if you replace all four turn signal bulbs with LEDs, I think you only need TWO load resistors. One for the pair of left turn signal LEDs and another for the pair of right turn signal LEDs.
I installed the recommended bulbs on my roundtail a couple of weeks ago. I am extremely happy with the results.
Has anyone looked into LED headlamps bulbs?
Brian,
Did you ever get an answer to the headlamp question or did you ever proceed with an LED conversion for headlamps? I am working on putting the headlamp buckets back together and now would be time to change connector if I go that way. I will want a look close to original. They make some strange looking ones that don't appeal to me.
Nice, but looks like you got yellow bulbs? If they're behind the red lens you should have gotten red. LEDs are narrow-band light sources (they only put out a narrow range of wavelengths) so if you don't match the LED to the lens you don't get proper brightness out of the overall system.
I went for LED running, turn,reverse and brake lights on my 1976 Spider. I really like the resulting 'fresher' look...
I used an electronic flasher (my old can flasher was about dead anyhow...), which caused me to switch to an LED for the indicator arrow.
A few notes - LED-based 'bulbs' get hotter even though they do draw far less current (hence needing the electronic flasher). This is because an incandescent bulb RADIATES (wastes) infrared light, basically heat, but that heat winds up far from the bulb in the end. An LED doesn't radiate infrared, but the power supply stage (which might just be a resistor!) generates some heat which doesn't go anywhere. It just heats the bulb base.
Some of the tiny dash lights are polarity-sensitive - if you try those, test as you go (they won't die if backwards - just not light).
Superbrightleds.com has good prices & descriptions.
A primary reason I went to LEDs was to avoid the need to take apart my running light assemblies to 'change a bulb' - the LEDs should last many times the lifespan of an incandescent bulb. That's why I did the dashboard lights and glovebox, mirror and trunk lights in LEDs as well (not quite as satisfied with that change - dimming works poorly, and some bulbs have poor radiation angles...).
My hope is to never again need to change a bulb!
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LED headlights are not quite ready for prime-time, in my opinion. But I'll keep checking on their progress...
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