Was curious if any of you guys have 1156 or 1157 led bulbs in your signals or parking lights. Any feedback? I see a crapload of em on ebay. Is a quality reg bulb a better choice? Was looking for a hyper-white effect......

 

Great idea. I want amber. mmmm

 

This is not by far gospel, but got this off an ebay LED bulb item's description:

1. White LED Bulbs, do not work behind a red lens...
2. The red lens will filter out ALL White LED bulbs.
2. White LED are NOT bright.
3. They will not last as long as RED or Amber.
4. They have a very high failure rate and turn blue!!!!!
5. A Red or Yellow/Amber LED bulb is 5 times brighter than ANY white LED bulb and last 100,000 hours

Keep your money in the bank or pocket and do not purchase any White LED bulb for vehicle applications....

If you are looking for a LED White backup light bulb, use a standard incandescent bulb that is far brighter than ANY White LED bulb and cost far less.

All the above was copy/pasted from an item on ebay, with a seller claiming to be expert:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1157-...49443428QQrdZ1

Can anyone chime in?

 

I had these in my rear turn signals. They looked good, bad thing was that they blinked very fast, ricer fast . I guess you need a resinator to adjust for the low watts that the leds pull. I had to take them cause if the fast blinking.

 

Keep in mind that the are out on the streets.

 

Yeah I was looking into those bulbs but I was very unsure about quality. I ended up going with silverstar ambers until I heard something about those ebay LED's. Let me know if you buy them and how they turn out. Im happy with the silverstars but this pic got f'd up....



This one came out better:

 

hmm. this interests me. would it be illegal to have amber led turn signals in the front and rear?

 

I have mostly LED bulbs in my car. Here's what I've found.

1. Definitely DON'T use white bulbs. Behind a red lens, they will appear pink. If you use red, they are very red, and very bright at night. Regular bulbs light up a tad bit faster though (I did a side by side comparison). During the day, regular bulbs are brighter, but the LED's are still plenty visible.

2. I have amber bulbs in the side marker lights (the ones that are always on, not the blinkers themselves, or the clearance lights for that matter). During the day, they are not very noticeable (I have clear lenses), and show up as a little orange spec. At night, they look very bright orange.

3. I tried white LED back-up bulbs. They look nice, and are "bright", but they don't illuminate squat. It was almost as if they weren't even there. Stick with regular bulbs if you want to actually see something behind you in the dark.

4. I tried amber LED signal bulbs. I used a resistor in each to keep the blink rate at normal speed. Again, they are very bright at night, but during the day, they were hardly visible, and I wound up switching them back to bulbs for safety reasons. I didn't want to risk getting rear-ended because the person behind me couldn't see my blinkers.

Personally, I would definitely recommend using them in the brake lights. Knowing they will never burn out and are always working is nice piece of mind.
As far as the blinkers, its up to you to decide if they are bright enough during the daytime to be worth the change. Again, though, they will never burn out on you, so you shouldn't ever have to change them again.

 

thanks for the info man. i have the Altezza Gen 2 tails, so my brakelights are already round LED rings. i love em, but i was thinkin about puttin led amber bulbs in for the turn signals, front and back, but i dont think im gonna. ill stick wit the regular amber turns.

 

i had led bulbs in all my lights at one time.......they blink extreamly fast, and it gets very old very fast. I would not use them in your breake lights cause they do not light up that much cause they do not spread light out, they just put it out in a strahgt line.

 

anyone have experience with the yellow led 1156/1157s on ebay? I want really bright yellow turn signals but don't wanna spend $30 just to try them...

 

Actually they don't - LED is nearly instant-on...

Also:

www.autolumination.com has MANY different types of 1156/7 bulbs that have a WIDE ANGLE application.

I just ordered some wide angle ones in 1156/7 and 194s. When I get them I'll see what the deal is.

I'm already using wide-angle 194 LEDs b/c I have the red/white tails from custom-maxima and the corner lens is white but requires a red bulb. When I put a red incandescent 194 in, the diamond cut lens made it look pink (and that was a new bulb - before the color faded) but the LED looked as red as red can get...

Maybe I'll post some pics up when I'm done but I'll have to take it slow since redoing all your bulbs is not as cheap as one would think; plus I'm doing my interior and my gauge cluster.

 

I just ordered the leds for my car, i wanted to go the legal route and get all amber for the 1156,1157,and 194. I got the white leds for the license plate lights and for the trunk light aswell as the door lights. I hope it will all work fine.

 

Not true. LED's are supposed to be instant on, I agree - but when I did a side by side comparison (LED's in the left, bulbs in the right, with me behind the car and my friend hitting the pedals), the bulbs lit up a tad faster. Do it yourself and see.

 

I did do it myself. Not on my Max but on a Sentra.
Besides I have a friend w/ a 200x 330Ci that does NOT have the LED tails. He did the swap w/ a 2k5(?) M3 which DOES have the LED tails. We put one on to compare and when flashing or breaking the LED lit up much quicker.
Also, haven't you ever noticed driving behind an Infinity or a Cadi (which was one of the first on the road w/ LED tails) that their lights seem to go on quicker?
Google it, if you want. You'll find out that the LEDs do come on quicker.

What I'm saying is - maybe it's just the way the Max lights them up?? Like I said, I haven't done them on my Max yet - I've only seen other cars.

 

Mabye you mixed the bulbs up. LED's come on instantly where as regular bulbs take a while to light up. I have a set of amber led's in my parking lights I believe they're the 194's and have a regular silverstar amber for the 1157.

 

every single light in my car is led and if your going to use led for your turn signals, you need to get load resistors, otherwise it won't blink at all or it'll blink too fast.

 

That's what I'm saying. I'm not arguing that LED's don't come on faster. I know they do. Especially all the new cars these days that come with them as stock. That and the fact I like the "redder" color they produce were the reasons I switched in the first place. But my max lights them up slower than bulbs. And I also have all LED's bulbs in my car, with the exception of the headlights.