LED lights

Lefty · Uber Guru

LED lights

65sssd · Poncho Master!

You have me interested also. I'm pretty sure that's in my dash too.

davelacourse · Poncho Master!

Can you lay them side-by-side? Or, measure diameter of yours and see how many millimeters?

Dave

dualquadpete · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

From what I can see the "pins" are different. LED looks as though it has the European base on it with longer "pins" [if you will] as there not really a pins?????

Lefty · Uber Guru

I have found a place that ships from vancouver and i will see if i can go there and look at some.
http://www.carledbulb.com/products.php
i found the 1157 brake/signal LED bulbs from Chevy 2 only and they work great..
dash and inst cluster bulbs are allways burning out and thought it would be cool to replace them with LED's

led bulb.jpg

dualquadpete · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

Those look pretty good, only thing you have to check is where the sockets point too!! If they aren't from the back straight at the lens, they are useless as the LED's only "project straight out. If it's like a trailer light where bulb stands up from bottom of light, it will "project straight up" On the dash light bulb, I had some conventional bulbs with that set up & I'm sure those "bayonnets" [pins] are English & also Japanese

Lefty · Uber Guru

I plan on buying 1 and seeing how they work, or maybe 2 for were the signal lights go in the inst cluster, they are right behind the lense.

Lefty · Uber Guru

Picked up 2 different LED lights (1157) from Lordco.
$14 each. they are better then the ones Chevy 2 only sent, they have the 12 on the face and more on the sides. forgot to take a picture but will add one later
here is what the tailights look like, much more red in real life but red is a hard colour to take a pic of..

drivers led cropped.jpg

-- Edited by Lefty on Monday 3rd of January 2011 08:22:40 PM

68 327 4spd · Poncho Master!

can you put one LED on one side and a standard on the other and stand back and take a pic so we all can see the difference.

Lefty · Uber Guru

I will try that tommorow

Lefty · Uber Guru

tried to take pictures but darn flash washes everything out.
with a standard bulb in drivers side and the LED in pass side
the results were pass slightly brighter but also was a deeper red..

this is the best pic i got but it is hard to tell much difference..

taillights 2 cropped.jpg

-- Edited by Lefty on Tuesday 4th of January 2011 08:53:58 PM

68 327 4spd · Poncho Master!

cool thanks!

cdnpont · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

I'd heard talk that the running light side of a led can be so bright as to be mistaken for a brake light. Is there any truth to this?

Lefty · Uber Guru

that could be, cause i noticed the diffrence between break and tail light is not as great as when
it was with a standard bulb

Canadian Poncho · A Poncho Legend!

Did you have to replace the flasher with a solid state unit? I heard that the LED's don't draw enough amperage to activate a mechanical flasher.

427carl · A Poncho Legend!

defintely need different flasher

427carl · A Poncho Legend!

LED's (light emitting diodes) are just diodes that glows when current is passed through it. As such, it does not "heat up" an element to create light. Resistance of these LED's are much much higher than your regular bulbs, which draws less current (and thus saves power). In reference to the turn signal system, your OEM turn signal flasher unit works with the resistance of the bulbs. They flash at a rate proportional to the resistance of the bulb. The higher the resistance, the quicker it flashes. When your regular bulb burns out, it creates an open circuit to your system, making your lights blink at an incredible speed to tell you have a burnt out bulb. But when you place an LED to your turn signal, your car does not realize that the bulb is a high resistance LED. It detects more resistance from the LED than regular bulb, and is fooled to think that your bulb is burnt. Hence the "hyper-blink". LED flasher units has its own clock crystal to regulate the speed of how fast the blinkers go instead of using the resistance of the bulb. The downside to that is that when your bulbs fail, it will not detect it (not that big of a deal).

LED's are different than regular filament bulbs in design. They do not emit light in all directions like filament bulbs. They are directional in nature and as such, your emitting angle is limited. One way to fix it is to broaden the angle with a lens. But since you have purchased LED bulbs which are based on regular filament bulbs, they will not have this feature. Because of this, you would think they are dimmer because of their poor application. But when you have LED's designed for that specific job, they do quite well (think Audi, BMW, and Mercedes LED systems).

To tell you the truth, all "brands" you hear comes from the same source. They are from the same factory making these for everyone. If bulb from company a looks identical to company b, they are most likely the same thing. So brand doesn't matter. As to making it better, you can purchase higher power Luxeon LED's to have more light emitting from the LED. Or you can try to buy bulbs with more LED's aimed at different angles to increase light radiance.

bowtieddown · Veteran Member

I was using LED's for my DRL (daytime running lights) in my '06 chev p/u, amber in colour, multiple diodes (12). For the first year they were fine, but after some time, one of them started to flash intermittently and only a few diodes. Hmmm.......this could be a problem.

I rarely drive the truck and on one sunny day driving through town, I was approaching a mall driveway where there was a vehicle waiting to make a right turn out in front of me. The closer I got, the more the driver seemed hesitant in proceeding. Yes, he was interpreting my flashing DRL as a turn signal.

Needless to say, I'm back to incandescent bulbs.

mike.

427carl · A Poncho Legend!

1965CS wrote:

69Laurentian wrote:

Did you have to replace the flasher with a solid state unit? I heard that the LED's don't draw enough amperage to activate a mechanical flasher.

You can use a regular heavy duty type flasher as long as there is a regular bulb in the circuit. A few years back, I installed LED's in the rear lights but kept the 1156 in the front and the flasher works fine.

View image

Thats very good to know... thanks

Lefty · Uber Guru

i have not replaced front ones yet, will let you know if the stock flasher works after i cange them..

Lefty · Uber Guru

well i replaced both rear and front lights with LED
and my flasher seems to work fine with both front and rear signal
using them, Im going to order Amber ones for the front.
they are much easier to see in daylight..

-- Edited by Lefty on Monday 17th of January 2011 01:19:15 PM

Lefty · Uber Guru

so far it is a regular bulb, but they are next

Thinking of going to a red or blue for inst cluster..
and amber or green for signal indicators

here is a good site for them
http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/index.cgi?action=DispPage&Page2Disp=%2Fspecs%2Fba9s_4led.htm

gparis7 · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

I'm looking for smaller white LEDs for the running lights on my 68 Caprice; they take the smaller round bulbs (1156/7 is too long). Haven't found any yet but I'm sure they are available.

Lefty · Uber Guru

send me a pic of one, sounds like the one in my floor console
that lights when door opens.
yours may be the same as the 057 (9mm)
like this one ??

057 dash.jpg

-- Edited by Lefty on Monday 17th of January 2011 08:59:12 PM

gparis7 · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

Yes, I think that's it. Same base as 1156, but a smaller bulb.