If you need some lights that are way brighter than stock, JDM Astar make these.
These are 2 bulbs for $11, but one reviewer said they are not very cool in color, more like 4300k temperature. Since I have 2 bulbs for dome lights, I may try these out. These should have the biggest effect on the interior color. My other bulbs are for floor illumination and they can stay as is.
These look bigger than 194 size.
If you’re not terribly interested in high-brightness, Fasttech has a whole bunch of NW “bulbs”. I went nuts and ordered a minimum of 2 of each for my tag-lights, just to try them all.
For that (tag-lights), I actually don’t want brighter, in fact dimmer would be better. Just don’t like the appearance of a billboard on the back of my car…
Anyway, I did find one set that’s got a single 5050 NW on it, which I’m using now. Still lights up the plate just fine, but is a great match for my car’s shade of white (“diamond white”; not eyeball-searing paper-white like most white cars are, and not mayonnaise-yellow like a Chrysler 300). Beautiful match, just ever so slightly off-white.
https://www.fasttech.com/p/3267500 or probably these https://www.fasttech.com/p/3278100 are the ones.
For interior lighting, I went with WW. Where they’d fit, I used Amazon.com , which are quite nice. Where I couldn’t fit the extra length (map lights, etc.), I used Amazon.com , also nice, but not quite as bright.
For most exterior lighting, I’m okay with CW. I like those 800lm CW JDMs that I’m running now for backup-lights. Didn’t replace the lights on the underside of the doors (puddle-lights), etc. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but I got ’em if I do.
Hate when people do that.
Also hate those emails Amazon sends me, “Can you answer this question?” when the question is something like “Will these bulbs fit my —make— and —model— car?”. Uhhh, how’bout you look at the light first and see what form factor it is, first??
I try to stay away from “canbus” lights except in those rare cases when I absolutely need them, because they have those resistors in the base just to burn off extra current (as heat!!).
Map-lights, puddle-lights, footwell-lights, glovebox-lights… who needs canbus?? Only really for exterior lighting do you need them to not throw errors.
Oh, and this is what pisses me off. Everyone hawks those 6Ω resistors for turn-signals and the like. Uhhh, those’re burning over 2A!! Even with NO bulb installed, it won’t throw an error.
For my turn-signals, the LED bulbs are juuuuuuust under the threshold for throwing an error. Sometimes in cold weather it won’t even do that (coin-toss whether/not it does). So I got a bunch of 25Ω resistors to only cook off an extra half-amp or less, just to nudge it over that threshold. And if something happens to the LED bulb, it will still throw an error.
Hmm, trust random feedback saying they’re NW, or the printed spex and all the pix saying CW…?
I went with all WW, like those 5050s I pointed to in the previous post. Black leather interior, I just like the “warmth”.
My other car actually has a grayish-beige interior where WW would probably look nice, too, but I already did it in CW, which is all that was available at the time.
Yeah, 194, 921, W5W, T-whatever… they pretty much all fit the same base, but have different bulb sizes and lumenage.
Hmm.
I have these as leftovers:
I tested them. They put IMO more lumens out the front than regular incan bulbs but:
- are cooler in color
- lose about 30-40% in lux compared to GOOD quality H7 incan.
- need space behind the actual headlight
- turning the bulb itself affects the beam (you must tune it)
Hit me a PM guys, if somebodys in need to test these 
So that’s all they do to trick the monitoring system? Bah.
I have looked at one of these close up, do you think the extra resistor can be removed or does it also drop down the voltage to the led?
On my car I’ve only got 4 interior lights. 2 are in the front floorboards and are no big deal as far as color or brightness.
The other 2 are in front of the sunroof and shine left and right. These are the ones I need to focus on. The color temp of these, originally 906, effect the interior color. They can also shine in your face. I may build something special for them. Either a mirrored shield (aluminum tape) to keep it out of my eyes or take a led bulb apart and re-aim all the leds forward and to the side. I might could take a single emitter bulb and extend the base with wires then mount it facing the direction I want. I’ll need to think about some more.
I want to do my girlfriends car she has a 2014 corolla and her parents live in the country and we go and see them a bit i have an older car so we take hers usually. The light are stock H11 Phillips halogens horrible output maybe like 600-800 lumens max? I am looking at convtering from H11 to H9 for now unless i can find a LED kit that is more NW. Here the cops are strict with headlight tints your now aloud HID/ LED conversions unless they are stock from factory. Most HID i see here are really bad even from factory on cars very high in kelvin like 8000-1000k some are blue/purple and create a lot of glare.
I may leave the lights stock or just get better H11s and just put a light bar on the car they can be legally used in certain situations. Country driving being one of them. I like the idea of the H9 being around 2100 lumens and the H11 are supposed to be 1000 lumens stock and only 10watts difference in power consumption.
That’s it. The bulb is supposed to draw, say, 3A? Set your threshold to, say, 2A. Anything less probably means the bulb is out. So if your LEDs draw 1A, you need to pull at least another 1A to put it over that threshold. Preferably more if you want to be “safe”.
So you splice an external resistor across the wires, or you burn up at least that much heat on the board itself.
One notable exception is the Mini Cooper. Those will occasionally throw an error even if the bulb is still lit! If your bulb is supposed to draw 3A, as the bulb ages and is on its way out, the thinner filament will have a higher resistance and draw less current, say, 2.8A. So you “preemptively” set your threshold to 2.9A to get to the bulb before it goes “pouf!”, even if that annoying error indicates that the “bad” bulb is the one that’s still lit.
Nah, you can desolder them, or as I’ve seen, dremel them out like a bad cavity.
And resistors. Like parallelled chip-resistors on cheap-ass driver boards, there are usually a few resistors in parallel doing the dirty work.
Map lights? Unless you go driving with them on, it shouldn’t be a problem, should it?
I’ve got a “console” of switches in front of the sunroof, controls for the sunroof itself and sunshade, doodads for a programmable garage-door opener, other stuff. I’ve seen lights in that area, which I’m guessing is what you’ve got.
Hmm. Depending if the bulbs are loaded sideways, or socket-up, might make a diff. If sideways, not much you can do. if socket-up, you can get a low-profile bulb with a top-firing emitter, and use the “hole” it goes into to be its own natural shield.
Lookit these:
https://www.fasttech.com/p/3278100
Won’t be as bright as “bright” bulbs, but they’re sure low-profile!
H9s have the filaments in the same exact position as H11s, but are way brighter. No need to tweak the adjustments or anything. And they’ll still look “halogeny”, so the local militsiya would have to take a lumenometer to figure out you’re throwing 2100lm instead of 1100lm.
Basically, they’re the best stealth-conversion you can make, and for cheap.
Just buy extra bulbs, as they won’t have the same longevity as H11LLs (long-life). Bfd. Keep an extra pair in your glovebox along with a few alcohol-swabs (to clean the bulbs in case you get fingerprints on ’em), and you’re good to go.
In your case, you might consider only changing the high beams to led. Flick them on high when your out in the country and back to low in the city so the cops won’t hassle you.
Dunno what he’s/she’s got, but on my LaCrosse, I’ve got H11s on the outboard lights (low), and H9s on the inboard ones (high), by design.
So when he flicks on the brights, he should already have 2100lm each from the H9s or whatever’s in the brights’ sockets.
Me personally, I don’t like losing the close-in view when you flick on the brights. Just because I want to see what’s way up ahead of me, doesn’t mean I want to sink a tire into a hole and leave it behind me.
What I’d like to do is “convert” the fogs to something actually useful, like nice narrow pencil-beam spotlights.
I had add-on driving lights like that once upon a time, and loved ’em. Never once got flashed or anything, as these I aimed so… perfectly… that the beam would just skim along the road yet light up road-signs/cones/lollipops a good half-mile up the road.
Let me update my opinion of these bulbs. They are a LOT brighter than stock. Now that I’ve gotten out of my driveway and are using them in normal situations, I’m surprised everytime time I open my door. It’s like a blast of light. Lol. Its very easy to tell they are much brighter than incandescent bulbs.
The color is also fine. I’m starting to get used to new color. Before I would have given these a 4 out of 5 star rating, but now I’d say they are 5 out of 5. :+1:
for free, that is…
Alright thanks lads i am going to buy some H9 today and make em fit. The corolla has projector style headlamps so i could use a HID kit but its a bit douche if i was drive around blinding people lol.
I like the RMM light bars but out of budget right now smallest one is 500 Aussie pesos. So i will try and find a smaller light bar and fix it up my self make it waterproof and dust proof using of the shelf parts. Unless some one has a light bar they can recommend?
Probably 12 inch in max in size i could go smaller if i wanted. A few ways i can do this i guess use XHP50/70 that are 12v would be the easiest way. I was even looking at using 10-12 XPG3s i dont need any thing fancy. At least if i make my own i will mix the output so have some that are 3000k and others that are 6500k and some in between. Maybe even hook them up to their own switches.
TA how do you feel about a BLF light bar? lol
I watch roadkill and the cars they drive around in we would be arrested for here or fined heavily the laws are silly. I use to mod my cars but to much hassle now every where you drive the gov has highway patrols trying to make money.
I’d definitely take them, if shipping isn’t too much from you to me. I would have thought you’d have them gone by now.
I recently tried some sealed 6x7 LED headlights sold by LX-Light on Amazon. These lights are allegedly DOT approved. They did have an acceptable cutoff, but not as sharp as my aftermarket headlamp housings with glass lenses. The biggest problem by far was the beam pattern. Car headlights need to have a fair amount of throw, and this thing spilled almost all its lumens within the first few dozen yards in front of the vehicle. On low, it literally had no hotspot. This was verified with a lux meter. The hot spot with the old headlights and 80W halogen bulbs was almost exactly 10x higher than anywhere in the LED beam pattern. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to stop my old Jeep in time if a deer were in the road while I was going the 80 mph speed limit. It spilled much more light to the sides than usual, which would probably blind other drivers, but could have been kind of nice for me on night time off roading trips. These lights were supposed to be 6500K, but I think they were even colder than that. There won’t be a long term review of these lights as I quickly returned them.
I like testing stuff, but I have no H7 vehicles.
With 6x7 lights I’ve seen versions that had projectors built in. That’s what I would look for if I had a vehicle with that size. Then stick in a Led or maybe HID bulb.
Here’s a pretty nice review video of fifteen different LED bulbs in the h11 size. I can tell you now that the bulbs using the Philips luxeon zes emitters pretty much kicked everybody’s butt as far as brightness and proper beam pattern.
Huh… interesting!! Wonder how much those GTRs go for… 
$200 to $240 a set. I would never spend that much.