I’m looking to replace the 3rd brake light bulb in my car.
The one I have in there currently isn’t very bright, so I’m looking for something that’s bright, has a decent lifespan and doesn’t cost too much.
It’s a 1156 BA15S, the one I have now looks similar to this:
After a couple of years of trying to retrofit LEDs into cars, my conclusion is it’s just not worth it.
You can replace interior lights with W5W LEDs but it also needs to be high quality to last long.
For the brake / turn lights you can try to find ones with lots of phosphor converted red / amber LEDs on them but no built-in ‘CANBUS’ bullshit which is just a resistor with low value which generated a ton of heat.
If your car has bulb out error reporting, you will either have to hack the software to make them not reporting, or connect external, high wattage resistor with appropriate resistance value to fool the system.
It’s a lot of work for a little bit of aesthetic improvement. Just stick with the original tungsten. They are more reliable and they are tried and true and in some places they are the only bulbs that are road legal.
Apparently discontinued, but I still got a set (pair) of JDM-ASTAR 1156es in my car’s CHMSL.
Good throw pattern, illuminates everything evenly, nice and bright.
Similar 3157s in the brake/tail combos, also a good throw pattern and hella bright.
I did a side-by-side test with one of those JDMs and a… 3357? 3557?.. whichever’s the one that burns 40W vs 30W, and the JDM looked brighter. Plus faster turn-on time, that fractional-second improvement can make the difference between someone just stopping short of your bumper, and occupying the same spacetime as the contents of your trunk.
Absolutely not!!!
Those “resistor kits” are retarded. They burn off MORE wattage than the bulb itself! They’ll show a perfectly healthy bulb being there even if you pull the bulb out of the socket!
All you need to do is “leak” just enough current to trick the 'puter into thinking the bulb’s there.
In my newer car, it kept throwing bulb-out warnings with the amber LED bulbs I put in (hella bright, for the record). I snipped the wires and wired in 2 flying leads that would go to a resistor. I started with 30Ω and kept going up and up until around 60Ω would start tripping codes. So I wired in a 50Ω resistor for a bit of a buffer.
This way, if the bulb would blow, I’d still get the bulb-out warning. If even a few of the LED chips would blow and it’d draw less current, it’d trip the warning, too. So I got hella bright yellow LEDs for the turn-signals, and kept the functionality to let me know if something would go wrong with the bulb.
Each resistor, after soldering into the flying leads permanently (soldered, coated with “liquid electrical tape”, finished with shrinkwrap), I then mounted to the taillight assembly with a bit of Fujik.
More work to get it right, but you do it once and then forget about it for the life of the car.
It’s not for ascetics for me.
The 3rd brake light isn’t bright enough and I feel it’s a safety issue.
Part of the problem is the Dealer tinted the entire back window so the brake light is filtered by tint.
I don’t want to mess with the tint so my plan was to get a brighter bulb.
This is also another reason I want a LED bulb for the 3rd brake light.
Skip the junk that look like corn cobs or Christmas trees, and just radiate their output spherically. That’s not how such light fixtures function.
As any flashlight enthusiast should understand, they function by using the reflector to direct the output of the emitter in the desired fashion, and with focus, not blasting stray light everywhere in an attempt to overcome fundamental flaws. A flashlight with an XP-G and the right reflector is going to be a much more effective animal than one with a bunch of bare, cheap T-1 3/4 emitters acting like a mule.
These look simple, and don’t look sexy or like they’ll ignite eyeballs, but they are designed to focus their output on the reflector, and thus work properly, if the shape of the fixture is suitable.
https://www.amazon.com/SYLVANIA-Bright-Ideal-Lights-Contains/dp/B01A77TT7U
Two heat-sunk high-power emitters approximating a point source like the original filament, vs a bunch of cheap SMD emitters with no regard or attempt at focus.
Philips actually had similar designs on the market before anyone else did, but they’ve seemingly discontinued them, and now only peddle the junky stuff.
But keep in mind that even these types aren’t optimal if the “bulb” and its emitters aren’t indexed in the right relationship relative to the reflector bowl when set in place. If the CHMSL is short and wide, but the bulb ends up being oriented with the emitters facing the top and bottom, it’s not going to work in the best fashion.
Lastly, also keep in mind that red emitters need to be paired with red lenses.
Not white emitters, which result in pink output, which ≠ brake lights and doesn’t conform to universal signalling protocol.
But I think you were already aware of that.
I forgot about Zevo, I’ve had good luck with them in the past.
Thanks!
