LED replacement: what lumens?
 

I want to replace the marker & tail lights on my Toyota pickup with LEDs, but I can't find anything that gives the appropriate lumens to use. The marker lights, for instance, are Type 194, but the SuperBrightLED website has versions from about 5 to 150 lumens. How can I find out what the proper values are?

I would have thought this would have been some sort of industry or government standard, but all my searching just comes up with retailers, anecdotes from people who've switched (without lumen info), or people asking the same question and not getting answers.

Lack of useful information in product advertising really irritates me. Labels on products often have tons of info about how great the product is, what uses it could have, notices about it being known by the state of CA to be linked with cancer, and to not eat it. If it's a battery, the product fails to mention how many mA of capacity it has. The only reason a person would buy a battery is because it is a store of energy, and the product fails to mention how much stored energy it has.

As with light bulbs, the one reason we buy them is because they produce light, which often manufacturers fail to mention how much light they produce.

Sometimes I feel the world has conspired to annoy all the reasonable people.

There's no standard and if there was, it wouldn't mean much unless all cars were fitted with this standard reflector and lens. Otherwise, there will always be variability from car to car.

From my experience, unless it's for an interior or something, you really want to go all out and get the brightest you can find. At current tech, the brightest units on superbright are slightly to reasonably brighter than stock.

A 60W incandescent bulb is 800 lumens.

A 194 type bulb uses 3.78W.

Add math:
800 / 60 = 13.3 lumen per watt

3.78 * 13.3 = ~50 lumens.

So a 194 bulb puts out roughly 50 lumens.

Thats my best guess.

Advance auto parts specs says 25 lumens:

Sylvania Long Life 194 LL Mini Bulb, 2 Pack 194 LL: Advance Auto Parts

But here it's just the opposite: they do tell you how many lumens each bulb produces. What they don't tell you is how many you need :-(

They even have a lookup that supposedly tells you what bulbs your vehicle takes. So I put in my make, model, and year, and it comes back with a list. The first item is front sidemarker, which is a type 194, and it gives a link to them: https://www.superbrightleds.com/vehi...1352&year=1988 10 different ones, ranging from 5 to 260! lumens.

I would get the brightest ones - LED's are directional, and in order for them to work well in fixtures that are designed for incandescent bulbs, they need to be as bright as possible.

SuperbrightLEDs are good. The lumens specs are accurate, unlike what you get on ebay.

Here's where I got my list of oem lumens: Lamp Replacement Guide Home

Here's my thread from doing my bulbs. http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...hts-25155.html
I used the big LED tail bulbs in red, and the 220 lumen in red is equally bright as the oem 440 lumen white, filtered to red by the lens.

I've since put the brighter cargo bulbs in my front markers as well for more see-me visibility. They're warm white instead of amber but much brighter.

I bought a pack of cheap LEDs on ebay and they worked great.... for about a month, then they started burning out. Bought some from superbrightleds and they were more expensive and less bright, but they've been in 3 months and no problems at all.

I've had LED tail/brake lights (from SuperBrightLEDs, IIRC) in the Insight for 10 years or so, with no problems.