LED running lights at Walmart

[Cobb]

Nope, never made a light, but Ive purchased those that are made up of several bulbs to the smt, and multiwatt ones. Ive even had the fastoon ones die on me that are used in dome and map lights.

Could listening to loud rap music play a role in short led life?

[Chrysler kid]

Originally Posted by Cobb

Your license plate lights work year after year? I use to loose those the fastest til I learned a trick. Once I pass inspection unplug them til next year.

I have been using the same bulbs for 3 years and they still work!!!!

You might want to seal the housings with some silicon, it's uncommon that they fail so quickly.

[RedDevil]

I had several LEDs fail in the license plate holder and now the SMD towers in my park lights are starting to flicker.
The 3W SMD H11 towers that I use as DRLs in my fog lights work fine, all of their zillion small LEDS burn. It is just a bit underpowered, I'm tempted to put more powerful LEDs in.

The small SMD blocks in my under door lights had bad LEDs and color distortion.
I now have 2x5 LED grids and they work fine, though they are just too large to fit ricght behind the glass so they lauy on the bopttom of the lamp housing with all the wire and connector stuff in the way, yet much more light that the OEM lamps.

I have single LED festoon map lights and 7W 24 LED grids in my dome and boot lights. They are bright enough to read all the print of an insurance policy by. When I unlock my car the dome light lights up, and so does the area surrounding my car. Easy to find in a dark parking area

None of the LED grids in my car failed on me but one very powerful and cheap 20 LED grid I bought out of curiosity with no plan for it had a bad LED out of the box.

I had a delayed delivery (almost 2 months!) from miniinthebox and got a free reorder, gave one of the spare LED grids to my father in law who saw 2 out of 10 LEDs die.
The other spare LEDs that I put in my wife's car all work.

So, mixed results.
LED grids seem more reliable than SMD towers, interior lights have an easier life than exterior lights and LEDs in moving parts like doors and boot lids suffer most.

[oldtamiyaphile]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

White LEDs do not contain yellow or orange light like incandescents do.

Not according to physics:

Electromagnetic spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White light can only exist if all frequencies are present and in balance.

[oldtamiyaphile]

Originally Posted by Vman455

Not the Prius (2013), and not my previous 7th-gen Civic (2005). And not the Viper (which was a 2002, the same year, I believe, that the Chrysler switched to TIPM control of lighting on some models). On all those cars I ran/run LED turn signals and simply swapped out the flasher. In fact, on the Prius everything is LED, including headlights.

Depends on your definition of 'modern'. Really surprised by the Prius though, but then my newest Japanese car is a 94. The Euros went to body computer control a long time ago, even vans were doing it by 2003.

I tried LED tail lights in my Fiat, one side first, compared it to the stock one, as expected the bulb warning came on (not a big deal), fitted the second, and the body computer decided that since both tail lights are 'out', not to send any current to either! With some experimentation I found that I need 8w/ bulb to keep the computer happy. Rather than add a load resistor, I'm going to use the incandescent tail lights (5w) to make up the load, while giving a bit of extra light (but that means hacking the light clusters so will wait till warranty ends). I sometimes do wonder what was wrong with a switch/ fuse/ bulb arrangement. CANBUS was supposed to reduce all the wiring complexity of modern cars, but one look at the number of fuses and relays in a 'basic' car (no power seats, heated everything/ radar etc) makes me wonder.

[oldtamiyaphile]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

So, mixed results.
LED grids seem more reliable than SMD towers, interior lights have an easier life than exterior lights and LEDs in moving parts like doors and boot lids suffer most.

My Jeep has LED's everywhere because vibration kills filament globes. You have to keep them dry because of their driver circuits, but if you buy good quality lights they last forever (my oldest are now at least 5 years old, and they were actually cheap ones off DX). Nowadays I spent $40-50 on a pair of stop/tail lights, mainly for the safety aspect. They're almost twice as bright as stock so no chance of missing them on a sunny day.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

Not according to physics:

Electromagnetic spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White light can only exist if all frequencies are present and in balance.

That's why "white" LED is often a misnomer.

Regardless, I oversimplified the facts surrounding white LEDs. There are 2 common ways to produce an LED that appears white.

The first involves combining red, green, and blue in the right amounts to trick the eye into thinking it is seeing white light. This is what TVs and computer monitors do.

The second most common method is to use a UV LED and a phosphorus coating. The phosphors convert the UV light into white light. A person might get orange and yellow out of this method of creating white light, but it's still wasteful to spend the energy to produce light in a broad spectrum, and then filter out all but a tiny slice of it. The usable light will still be too dim to be of any use.