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.

I'm thinking about getting a set of their Headlights for the Focus. H13 bulb. Just need to see if it will fit.

And their tail lights and reverse lights ...

PaleMelanesian beat me to it: SuperBrightLEDs is really good about posting luminous efficacy on their listings. And of course they're also pretty good about selling specific colors, so you don't wind up losing any of your generated brightness in the lens. You buy 100 lumens of orange, most of it goes through your marker light lens instead of getting wasted in the filtration process.

In terms of preserving safety, I wouldn't replace any factory corner lighting with LED (tail markers brake, signals etc). As trendy or power-saving or color changing as LED might be, they simply are not tested and approved by the manufacturer. Add weather into the mix and the problem can be compounded. I want to have max visibility to the cars around me as intended by the manufacturer. There will be a few that are improved by LED drop-ins but you can't universally put an LED bulb equivalent in a housing and expect it to perform as well as an incandescent.

Interior..no issues mod away.

Now that's just plain silly: assuming a 1988 vintage (design, at least - who knows how many times they've been replaced?) bulb is going to be more reliable than an LED.

Besides, I'm really not interested in safety per se, but in not running the battery down if I happen to leave the parking lights on. Then too, for brake lights there's the extra 1/10 second or so reaction time with LEDs...

Directionality is only an issue with headlights. I haven't changed those.

The LED replacements I have are equally as bright or brighter than oem. I'm approaching three years and none have failed. (besides the cheap ebay ones but they were meant to be a test and proved to be sub-par as I expected)

Knowing how poorly incandescents survive in as rough a service as automotive, I wouldn't hesitate to replace virtually every bulb with LED with the possible exception of headlights. The only thing holding me back is money and opportunity. I just got done replacing several lamps on my truck with LED and they're noticeably brighter.

Visual comparison of cheapo led's and "super bright led's". Cheapo one is on the right.

[IMG]http://i686.photobucket.com/albums/v...115_140405.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i686.photobucket.com/albums/v...115_140413.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i686.photobucket.com/albums/v...115_140436.jpg[/IMG]

Hah, but you bought the cheapest ones on superbright, they do sell bulbs intended for dash panels and the like where you don't really want them to be that bright.

If you buy the best bulbs on superbright, they'll typically be slightly brighter than OEM. The only ones that really fail are white bulbs for DRL's, white is one of the least efficient LED colours, though my reverse lights are fine.

These aren't really comparable. Superbright used to sell LEDs like the one on the left, but those are getting harder to find because they use chips with less output and are a directional board, whereas the "cheapo" on the right is what Superbright mainly sells now, and is designed for nearly 360-degree output.

There are many, many threads on LEDs for automotive use, LED design, LEDs in incandescent reflectors, etc. on HIDplanet. I went full-LED a while ago (the only incandescent bulbs left are the high beams), and, to get things just right, there will always be something to tinker with. I'm happy with all my interior lights and license plate lights, but will probably replace my turn signals and reverse lights at some point with a design like this that will fill the lens better and be brighter than the lower-lumen bulbs I have in there now.

Superbrightleds has good prices and good selection; V-leds cost more but are a generally more-reliable product with their own proprietary designs, and crazy expensive if you get their Triton line (which are length-adjustable, so they can be tuned to your particular housing). You can find a wide selection of LEDs on Amazon, but it's always a crapshoot depending on the vendor. Philips has a line of LEDs (in limited bulb sizes) designed for incandescent replacement available at Autozone, and Osram is coming out with their own line of automotive LED replacement bulbs soon. The Philips LEDs have something like a 10- or 12-year warranty, and I expect the Osrams will too.

Also, in terms of power-to-output ratio, red LEDs are least efficient, then amber, then white. To produce these colors, the LED (which is blue) has to be filtered. For an example, the bulbs I linked to are available in red (700 lumens/amp), amber (875 lumens/amp) and white (1363 lumens/amp).

i replaced a few LEDs in the house, 60w equivalents. the "best buy" cheapies, 2 have quit working. the GEs are still running strong.
I find that lumens and watts are not interchangeable. all companies have their own method for testing.
I have bought from Ebay, straight from the manufacturer and 3rd parties. you gat what you pay for but when you find a good supplier and the price is good, technology changes and you will have to start all over again. even most of the threads on HIDplanet are outdated. it gets confusing after a while.

Here are several different threads just from the last week and a half. Many more available by searching.