Favorite car dome light replacement (DE3175)?

Any recommendations for a Festoon-base car dome light LED replacement? I’m seeing several on Amazon advertising only ~300 lm output, and I’m not sure that little output is worth the bother.

I suspect there’s something awesome out there that I’m missing, and hopefully one of you knows what that is.

In my car i use 2 of these COB leds, the adapters are included. https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4000283053353.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.47997b0a19ZqAB&algo_pvid=afab7b0f-9879-4609-b63d-8d0ec96fd298&algo_expid=afab7b0f-9879-4609-b63d-8d0ec96fd298-0&btsid=0ab6f81615957714210671566e48d4&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602*,searchweb201603*
The problem is that the COB leds are working perfect on 12,0V DC, i tested them before installing with a DC power supply.
I do not remember the exact current at 12V, but they are bright at 12V and do not overheat.
But the voltage in a car can be 14,4V and that is too much for these COB lights, they get very hot in a few minutes and will not last very long.
I installed them with a 15 Ohm 2W resistor in series, with that resisor they will not overheat, and they are still much brighter than the original 5W lightbulbs.

Most of the festoon replacement led “bulbs” are just 4 leds in series, without any current limiting, they will work, and they are very bright, but they do not last very long because they are made for 12V instead of 14,4V.

My car largely takes 194s/168s for interior lights, and I’ve had good luck with generic WW 194s. 5×5050s if space was cramped, else 9×5050s or even 13×5050s if they’d fit.

Festoons heat up pretty quickly if driven hard.

As for festoons, if you got a “well” the bulb fits into, you’re stuck with that tubelike form-factor, else you can spring for those bigger plates dotted with chip-LEDs for more brightness and better eat dissipation.

Eg:

I got something that looks a bit more like this:

Rather than a COB. Mine was some real brand sold at a brick&mortar store in the US, but also about four years ago… It did have some circuitry involved, so I hope it has some sort of current regulation.

I’ve been using “filament LED” festoons for a few years, and surprisingly for this kind of stuff, they’ve held up without any problems.

I’ve tried both the cool and warm tints, and the warm white versions do a good job of mimicking a regular bulb, almost indistinguishably.

But if what you’re after is blinding amounts of light, or trying to flood the compartment with whiter light, they’re probably not for you.

The only issue is that whomever decided to copy the longer festoons like the 6411 didn’t read the specs correctly, and interpreted the figures as tip-to-tip, and not contact-to-contact, so they are a bit shorter than they should be, and may not fit some fixtures well.

I ordered some warm white LED festoons from Aliexpress and they weren’t as bright as I was hoping for. First I tried the 6x 5050s and then the brighter 6x 3030s, which ran hot. I also didn’t like the tint.

However, I’ve been quite satisfied with the 48x 3528s using a festoon adapter similar to the one posted by Scallywag. Also the tint is decent. This is the one I got:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32263082885.html

It barely gets warm and it’s significantly brighter than all the other festoons I tried. Of course you’ll need enough space in your light compartment.

i don;t find car LEDs to be worth the trouble

the light has weird dispersion patterns, or colors, they can be physically fragile, and they don;t work well with vibration, heat, or overvoltage
all of which you have in a car

plus they save practically no measurable amount of energy
you do not use a dome light enough to make the savings worth anything

wle

I think this kid’s balloon needs popping…

Yes and no.

Like I said, the filament style festoons I use are basically equivalents, practically in all but power consumption.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32971474810.html

They’re no longer available from the seller I got them from, but they’re all similar.

The segment of the “filament” is uniform, regardless of the external length, and that results in them being noticeably brighter than a 36mm C5W, and perhaps only in the ballpark of a 41mm 6411 (a C10W hasn’t been formally defined).

I don’t recall what the specific figure was, but I measured them to draw no more than 1W each. In my application, that’s 3W vs 20W total, and in a car whose body computer doesn’t have a limit timer, much less of a risk of running the battery down if doors are left ajar.

That’s not going to be radically different, or wow anyone, but it’s no more detrimental to night vision either, as with some of the brighter options.

The trunk, OTOH, is a different story. A single 6411 is barely adequate, but no more. There, I have a “Canbus” style retrofit that claims to have a couple XP-Gs, with a heatsink. No messing around with those that use an array of 3535s, 5050s, or whatever. It brought a palpable improvement to seeing what’s in the trunk.

Both have been surprisingly reliable, and cost much less than the “legit” retrofits offered by Osram, Philips, etc., whose outputs are rather disappointing, and rather expensive. Those are certainly not worth it, IMO. And these aren’t signalling lights, so they don’t present potential safety issues, as most of that awful junk does.

I replaced the rear brake-lights (40W xx57s, not the usual 32W ones) in one car with JDM Astar LED bulbs, and the LED ones are noticeably brighter, and have that nice “snap” when blinking on/off. Better, the light is actually more uniform than the hotwire versions.

More JDMs for the amber turn-signals in my other car, and I think Luyed flat 2-sided white which worked out beautifully, shooting light down the 2 troughs of the [long’n’narrow] reflector vs going nowhere on the shallow end.

Hell, at night, sometimes I just like chirping the alarm to see the incredibly bright amber and white flashes in back. :laughing:

Didn’t do anything in front yet.

You used to have to worry about standard and “CK” type sockets, but not anymore, as a lot of newer bulbs are “smarter” and won’t pop your fuses if you get the wrong ones.

Point being, that some reputable mfrs have some damned good LED replacements for xx56 and xx57 type bulbs.

I saw these on Banggood … look OK

Am I the only one using these 10w flood light LED for my dome?
My car has a huge cavity so I just solder some wires to a spring festoon adapter and a resistor to it and it runs cold and bright. Best part it’s 4000k

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32932464524.html

I just has spares from my recent floodlight repair

The big advantage I found with LED dome lights…
Leave one on overnight and the car still starts the next day :wink: :+1:

I’ve been using JDM Astar LEDs for my marker lights (LEDs in the blinker give “hyperflash” and the workarounds are all too much for me to bother, brake lights are already LED). The earlier models would give up after about a year. To be fair, they got quite warm and they were in tiny enclosed spaces. The most recent version I purchased has held up for 3 years without issue so far (and is brighter, too, go figure) so they’ve gotten better.

I have some ridiculous thing from 2015 in my back-up lights. They’re about 800 lumens each and going strong still.

On my newer car I had the bulb-out warning pop up on the dash, but it only took a 50Ω resistor to quell that. Was just on the edge of the there-or-not threshold, so just that little bit of extra current put it over, not the ridiculous 4Ω resistors or whatever they sell to “fix” that. Those resistors heat up like a whole ’nother bulb, and you could completely take out the LED bulb (or have it fail) and things will still show normal.

A cow-orker has a Mini Cooper, and talk about finicky… a not-quite-yet-burned-out bulb (marker light) will throw the bulb-out warning! Drove him and his mechanic buggy. The NQYBO bulb would have a thinner filament, thus higher resistance, thus lower current, and that was enough to throw the error. Replacing the still-working bulb with a brand-new one fixed it.

Anyway, it was easy for me to pull the taillight assembly which had its own wiring harness and one plug-in connector, so I could solder in the resistor at my leisure. I didn’t want to use crappy crimp-type wire-taps (which I could then get done in like 30sec for both sides), but did it right with soldering and liquid-electrical-tape and everything. More of a chore, but it ain’t going anywhere.

I bought these from a HIDPLANET member back in 2015 or so, too bad he’s not making them any longer.


https://www.hidplanet.com/forums/forum/general-discussion/leds/61700-introducing-sprengboard-dlight-discrete-light-module

I remember back in the day, my old Cav had a rather big dome-light, and I made my own replacement with something like 50(ish) T-1¾ LEDs. CW, unfortunately, as that’s all that was around in terms of “white”.

Grabbed a section of perfboard (the nice fiberglass stuff, not the crap you get online nowadays), and just dropped ’em in, 3S LEDs, so 6-across, and probably 8 to 10 rows. Discrete resistors tucked between for current limiting.

Was hella bright compared with the 194 or 168 it replaced, and L-E-D!

They weren’t overdriven (15mA each, or so), but voltage spikes may’ve nailed one/more of ’em, as a few years later a few strings started doing the random-blink thing.

One caution I recall is to make sure your LED lights are off when starting the vehicle.
Starting up can put brief voltage spikes out from the alternator which way exceed what LEDs can survive.