LED replacement bulbs for cars

For the tint, there is now the Luminus SST20 with high CRI (4000K and below).
I think it can be mounted on something like that as the SST20 is 3535 form factor. But no one got the idea…

all of this LEDs W5W (T10) and C5W are shit! =(

I try more than 10 types of W5W

some types of w5w and w10w

It will die after 1-6 month!
The most tenacious what I find was this


But after some month some of the lines of leds will die. But it will work with leftover LEDs.

Why? Because of hot. I mean it is not with aluminum pcb, it is with glass textolite what can not let heat away from the leds. And it is with ordinary smd resistors. When you car is muffledб it is about 12v, when engine is work - it is about 14v. Current with 12 and 14v is different.

Also there is really cheap leds with tiny crystal and they work to the limit (works with maximum current)

I upgraded C5W by aluminium radiator 14x14x6mm, but it is also with glass textolite with poor thermal conductivity.

Now I finalized drawing the pcbs for C5W (C10W) and finally (15-20 hours) pcbs for W5W (T10) LED lamps with TRI-R 3030 smd LEDs SunLike and NSi CCR - Constant Current Regulator & LED Driver (I call it smart resistor)

How much time need to draw pcb board?

If someone interesting, C5W will cost about 5$
W5W (T10) will cost 5-10$ (depends from led quantity)
1pcs 3030 SunLike led cost 0.5$ in my web-site

it seems like they are too much trouble
the power they save, is not really that much
the incandescents work ok and are cheap

i tried getting some brake/tail lights on aliexpress
somehow i confused what they all were and ended up with just ‘tail light’
(only one brightness)

they went in the socket, even though they were the wrong bulb

(was there supposed to be something to prevent the wrong one going in?)

because they didn;t work right, i swapped them around a lot, or tried

pretty soon the single solid wire that they used for a connection, broke off
75c wasted ! :slight_smile:

i won;t try it again

maybe for headlights but not marker or dome lights

wle

the one reason why I use led in my car - it is light in the interior of my car. It is 6pcs C10W - 10w each. It is 60W. It is shine, but too much power… In another cars salon (interior) light - it is W5W. One way to do it more shine - use good LED lamp, but there is no good W5W (T10) LED lamps =(

What I want is high CRI 3500k bulbs for cars, with fully adjustable beams for consistency.

may be this?

For dome lights, I use this kind of LED panels with adapters for the bulb holder:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Warm-White-Car-Interior-48-SMD-LED-Lamp-Light-Panel-T10-Dome-Bulb-BA9S-Adapter/232173771458
There are various sizes available, I always use the biggest which will fit behind the plexiglass panel. They work well for several years now. Sometimes the wires are not soldered, but just pressed in in the adapters. The resulting intermittant contact can be repaired by actually soldering. Not the LEDs fault though.

The other type of LED buld I made good experiences with is this:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/2X-Canbus-144SMD-BAU15S-LED-Blinker-Birnen-12V-Bernstein-Gelb/233462542894

https://www.ebay.de/itm/2x-1156-144SMD-BAU15S-PY21W-LED-Turn-Signal-Lights-Bulb-Canbus-Amber-Yellow-12V/293417003833
I use them as turn indicator, reverse lights and in the center brake light.
When being on constantly, they get hot as hell, but reduce the current after some time. There seems to be a sensor inside doing that. The heat seems to be no problem though, I ran them on a power supply for 24h straight and everything still worked. They get dimmer below 10V though. In my ancient `97 Toyota, the voltage sag with heating, lights, and rear window heating on at the same time while idling caused a voltage sag to below 10V apparently. This reduced the current the LED lights used, leading to rapid blinking. Parallel 4ohm resistors fixed that. Modern cars should have no problems with that. I still like these blinkers, they are so intense that they can be seen in reflective roadsigns.

Whenever I buy anything. I always check reviews on net first.
No reviews.
I go elsewhere. Let somebody else review/test them first.

There are a few good ones. as on here shows.
But more not so good.

you can check out ledlightupgrade.com. their automotive lighting is very high quality and engineered to work with factory housings and still provide a correct beam pattern that doesn’t blind everyone.

i tried some, they had several problems

i didn;t try the most expensive though

one problem: the terminals broke very quickly

also one thing you may run into - they do not draw the same current, so the car may think ‘these things are defective’ and do various inconvenient things

i decided it is not worth it
maybe for headlights but i have not tried yet
probably will not bother
the reduced power really doesn;t matter
they might be brighter but there is a limit to that, i mean you do not want them too bright
or a horrible blue color
or pink
which i have seen

wle

So hard pass on the Ebay ones? Sorry I’m a little slow

If you have an older car where there’s no bulb out warnings, it’s easier to install LED’s… but then it comes down to the flasher, as some base the flash rate on the current pulled and will rapid-flash with an LED replacing an incandescent bulb.

The Chinese have essentially flooded the market with crap LED’s. It’s such a huge waste, when consider all the production for simply subpar items like this. I’ve had my fair share of them burn out and abandoned LED’s for a few years.

Eventually some companies started to make reliable LED’s but for much higher cost. And some would have built-in resistors to trick the CANBUS / VAGCOM / error system. I wasn’t about to pay $44 for a pair of LED bulbs. So, I waited.

FINALLY, there are some makers producing fairly decent bulbs for low prices. Still, some just don’t last like they’re supposed to do. I’ve bought a few bulbs rated to defeat CANBUS error checking, but found they would only work with just 1 set of LED’s on the circuit. For instance, if I tried to do front & rear LED flashers, it would throw an error and I’d get rapid flashing. So, I have incandescent on the front, but LED’s in the rear. It works great. Essentially, rear will be seen much more than the front, as vehicles behind you are traveling in your direction.

I was able to find a supplier of auxiliary side turn signal markers that use multiple LED’s and do a little “animation” of the LED’s flowing forward. It’s enough current not to trip the bulb-out warning.

That was all exterior. Interior is easier, as on my car, a 2007 Audi, the CANBUS doesn’t care at all about interior bulbs. But my big beef was the temperature. 6500k is just unacceptable. Some 6000k rated LED’s are actually reported as showing a little more neutral, no bluish tinge, and that’s acceptable. But thankfully now some makers have focused on warm LED’s for interior bulbs (the festoon type). There’s just one other trick to this… DIMMING! Many of the bulbs being sold do not dim… and that’s a real bummer if you’re accustomed to a nice dim feature in your car.

I ordered a 6-pack set of Festoon style bulbs (41 mm) from Amazon. While the product description didn’t say anything about dimming, there were some reviews that said that they did. LINK.
Turns out these don’t dim, as confirmed by the seller, so I canceled. I found another set that reviewers say WILL dim, and I even asked a question that got 2 confirmations. Once I order and receive them, I’ll post about them rather than including a link now and having to edit again.

I also replaced my trunk and interior light with LED, i had found some Philips 4000K 40 lumen bulbs, way better than stock (and only 0.5W) but i would love to get 100-200 real lumens in a name brand.
The ones i got were discontinued iirc though i got some extras.

not worth it
i just get incandescents

but - they are also starting to have ‘tint’ issues

i got some that had a blue covering

light didn;t match the normal yellowish ones

wife complained

If it’s a coating, it might be possible to use micromesh and/or acetone and remove it.

For my reverse lights, I got Osram halogen bulbs. They’re wicked bright and they don’t generate a huge amount of heat. Reverse lights are meant to be temporary use anyway, so LED cost isn’t worth it. The interior festoon incandescent bulbs in my car get very hot within 10~15 seconds. After a minute, the dome plastic cover feels very warm. I don’t like this. So I’m hoping the LED’s have ordered will do the trick.

I bought a set of festoon LED light bulbs from Alopee on Amazon. They’re 2w with 18 SMD LED’s, rated 3000k in temp. I’d say they’re closer to 3500k. Nicely bright. No flicker / PWM. Nicely constructed, no flimsy qualities. $13 for a set of 6.

I’d gotten a few from AliExpress, rated at 6000k… and they’re junk. Much more like 6500k. Painful to look at. And they won’t run if power is below 2w.

Mmm, they look pretty good. Arranged as 3S6P.

Keep in mind, though, that they’re strictly 12V “bulbs”. That “9-28V” is probably that they just barely turn on at 9V, are rated for 12V/14V, and only handle spikes up to 28V (alternator dump). Anyone trying to run ’em from a 24V supply will probably cook ’em quick.

When I did a homebrew dome-lamp on perfboard, I use a similar 3S#P arrangement, too. So nominal 9V for the LEDs, which’d be pretty stable at 12V-14V with a simple ballast resistor for each string.

Those chip resistors can probably each put out more lemons than a 5mm LED.

Pretty good sign that at least these companies are putting ’em out in WW.

Yeah, I won’t be using these for any other application other than 12v (car circuits), so shouldn’t be an issue.

enough lumens can really brighten your lemons. :wink: :laughing:

bad experience with them

at least the cheap ones
they fail a lot

old blinker circuits do not work with them

I have recently upgraded my interior lights. This is the LED strip I used (warm white 480 LEDs/m):
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32947409084.html

Gallery:

Remove the window, and cut out a fitting piece of 0.3mm or 0.5mm aluminium:

Apply LED strips and wire them correctly:

Put in adapter:

Assemble:

Light in the center of the car:

Light at the front (LED strip only without aluminium):

Result:

I upgraded my center brake light in a similar way.
Gallery:

I have also tried many LED bulbs for turn indicator etc. lamps, but only these are very good:
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005003015222910.html
They really consume 24W without severe overheating within seconds. The only downside is that they just come in white, so you need colored glass. And the thermal grease inside is too little, some needs to be added.
Apart from that, they work excellently in my car. The turn indicators are insanely bright now. For the rear fog light, I added a cheap 30mm fan as this light can work long periods of time.
These lights cannot replace bi-filament rear bulbs with combined tail light/brake light (5W/20W). So I removed the wires from the PCB inside, and added 1 negative and 2 positive wires. Each positive wire got a diode to prevent accidental polarity mismatch damage, and to decouple brake and rear light voltage. One of the positive wires got a 2W/12ohm load resistor. This is now the rear light mode (4W). The other wire was connected to the brake light directly. This mode has the full 24W. It works well this way.