Looking to replace car tail light bulbs with LED

Hi everyone,

I would like to replace the tail light bulbs of my car with LED. I like the “instant” on effect of LED.

My stock bulbs are: 21/5watts bulb 7443

Any recommendations? There’s a ton of bulbs on ebay and DX sites. But not sure if they’re going to be “bright” enough.

Thank you

I haven't tried yet. Is the 7443 the same as a T20 base?

http://dx.com/s/t20?category=712

I'm going to be looking for some suitable LED bulbs for my scooter to try to save a few amps on the charging circuit and hopefully, boost visibility...

Wanna stay legal? By an approved high level LED stop light.

Approved by whom?

this is illegal. locked. banned.

jus kidding

Transport Canada.

Motor Vehicle Safety Regulations (C.R.C., c. 1038) Lighting System and Retroreflective Devices (Standard 108)

108. (1) Every passenger car, multi-purpose passenger vehicle, truck, bus, motorcycle and trailer shall be equipped with the lamps, retroreflective devices and associated equipment required by Technical Standards Document No. 108, Lamps, Reflective Devices and Associated Equipment (TSD 108), as amended from time to time.

(4) Lamps, retroreflective devices and associated equipment on a vehicle may conform to the applicable SAE standards and recommended practices contained in the 1994 SAE Handbook instead of the applicable SAE standards and recommended practices referred to in this section or TSD 108.

S6.1 SAE Standards and Recommended Practices subreferenced by the SAE Standards and Recommended Practices included in Tables I and III and paragraphs S5.1.4 and S5.5.1 are those published in the 1970 edition of the SAE Handbook, except that the SAE standard referred to as “J575” is J575e, Tests for Motor Vehicle Lighting Devices and Components, August 1970, for stop lamps designed to conform to SAE Standards J586c, J586 FEB84 and J1398 MAY85; for tail lamps designed to conform to SAE Standards J585d and J585e; for turn signal lamps designed to conform to SAE Standards J588e, J588 NOV84, and J1395 APR85; and for high-mounted stop lamps designed to conform to SAE Recommended Practice J186a. The reference in J585e to J256 does not apply. For headlamps other than motorcycle headlamps, unless otherwise specified in this TSD standard, the version of SAE Standard J575 is DEC88, and the version of SAE Standard J602 is OCT80. The definition of “optically combined” in SAE Information Report J387, Terminology - Motor Vehicle Lighting NOV87, applies to that term as used in J586c and J588e.

S6.2 Requirements of SAE Standards incorporated by reference in this TSD standard, other than J576b and J576c, do not include test for warpage of devices with plastic lenses.

S6.3 The term “functional lighted lens area” in any SAE Standard or Recommended Practice incorporated by reference or by subreference in this TSD standard has the same meaning as the term “effective projected luminous lens area”.

Whoa! Thought I was back on that ‘other’ forum. :open_mouth:

I have had good luck with regulated lights like this:

http://www.tmart.com/T10-1210-8-LED-Canbus-Car-Light-Bulbs_p143179.html

Others just have a little resistor and burn out fast.

Were they bright enough?

Yes, very bright, however they are license plate lights. I do have a pair of brake/turn signal led cluster lights, but I got them at an Auto Zone store several years ago. They still work fine, but I have no idea who made them.

Uhhh, that TMART bulb has no regulation, just resistors.

Also, note that a lot of modern cars have dead bulb sensors and a lot of LED bulbs don’t work with them… they say that the bulb is dead.

My bad, other bulbs I tried had a small (wired) resistor in series with the LED bulbs. I just assumed the chips were some sort of regulators since these light have lasted a several months while the others burned out in a week or two. I take it they are resistors? (I am not an electronics expert.)

The part marked 111 is a resistor. Connected in parallel to all the rest, 1.8W of waste just to make sure the dead bulb sensor will recognize the device as a bulb. Must be rather hot.
Two parts marked 181 are resistors. In series with LEDs.
Several months is not “long service life”.

LED’s in vehicles are a bad idea when using Plug N’ Play bulbs. If you must put LED’s in, retrofit a custom board in.

You can use 5mm superflux or plain 5mm made by reputable companies with just a simple v-reg to stabilize voltage. 9v vregs are generally best as 12v will cause less output when the alt isnt running.
Osram, Hp, Phillips they all make good ones. Red-orange is generally OEM as it has better visibility when compared to Red.

Copper holed bread board, Leds, Vreg, Resistors, Soldering supplies, and some time will yield MUCH better results than ANY plug and play bulb.

The best plug and play bulb is the ELEF bulbs that contain a single high power LED with a 360 degree optic to act like a filament. With the beam pattern out the sides, it can actually use the reflector and at a much better efficiency compared to a ton of misplaced little LED’s.

I replace my center high stop light (3rd brake) with some 5mm superflux ( about 30). Took me several hours for trial and error and results are good! Just used bread board to mount the through hole leds and a 9v reg to hold voltage steady, and designed my circuit around the 9v threshold.

Thanks for your response. They run cooler than the incandescent bulbs they replaced. However the original bulbs were very hot, easily burning my fingers when replacing one that was still working. :slight_smile: I will buy some spare incandescent bulbs to replace the LEDs when they die.

that made me laugh. I don’t even know why they have that sub forum when all they do is lock threads and ban users for asking questions.

I’d go with an LED high brake light if you’re going in that direction, but find out what the local laws are first. I don’t think it’s a trivial undertaking and you’d want to make sure it’s not going to blind drivers behind you, but it’ll be interesting to see what you come up with.

How bright do you want it? I put some of these 7.5W & 11W ones on my Pajero in the 1156 & 1157 format (turning assist, front/back indicator, brake/parking, & reverse lights). My reverse lights using the 11W 1156 bulb looks as bright or brighter than my daytime running lights. Cool thing I like about these are that they have amber, red, & white LEDs so the coloured lenses on your car doesn't filter out the light on a white bulb.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/322554/search?SearchText=7443

Thanks for the link BIGWOOD. That is the hardest part about trying to find decent replacement led’s for you car is sifting through all the low quality crap that is out there in order to find quality items that actually perform as good or better than stock.

I’ve had very limited success with this, the only LED lights still on my car are the liscence plate lights and the dome light.

I have a 99 Ford Explorer, and I thought there would be no issues with the brake lights being LED, as there is no bulb failure warning system and they don’t blink. I was wrong. At first it appeared to work, I was happy, and the LEDs were almost as bright as the incans. Then a week or two later I follow my wife home from the beach, (it’s her car) and I see a stuck on turn signal light. I didn’t touch the turn signals! After fiddling with it, I confirmed it was glitchy, so out came the LEDs.

I have heard of turn signals in particular needing some kind of ballast to work properly when bulbs are swapped for LEDs. Something to do with the relay not working properly at a lower load. That might also be why a blown indicator bulb causes the the one at the other end of the car to flash at twice the rate. That’s just a guess though.