My LED tail light conversion

[brucepick]

Nice job.
You definitely need to put up some pics of how it looks from the back in daylight.

[jjackstone]

1157 bulb specs

BULB POWER CONSUMPTION LIGHT OUTPUT LIFE

Voltage Amps Watts Candela Lumen Hours
#1157 High Element 12.8 2.10 26.8 32 402 1200

Low Element 14.0 0.59 8.3 3 38 5000

So if both elements are on in one bulb, you use about 35Watts per bulb. Which makes your LED conversion look even better. Nice.
JJ

[BrianAbington]

I have more pictures for yall.

Here is the removable panel with the original bulbs.


I cut the wires were they meet the bulbs and slipped the harnesses out. I then wired the harness up to the new lights so they can just plug into the factory harness.
I wired the part of the harness for the parking lights to the circuit that runs the cigarette lighter, so that they will come on when ever the vehicle is running.

Installed from the side


Daylight parking lights


Daylight brake lights

The camera does not show very well just how bright these are.

I forgot the night pictures of the parking lights but heres the night brake lights


From about 15ft


From about 60ft


I have to get down on my knees directly behind the lights for it to be to bright to look at. I may blind the people siting on the curb waiting for a ride but people in cars behind me will be just fine.

[brucepick]

Very nice.

[Peter7307]

Binger, A great series of posts about a well planned and executed changeover.
Thanks for the details and the pics as well.

Cheers , Pete.

[elhigh]

Binger, I like it. I have one question, though: Do the LEDs have a narrow viewing angle? Your statement that you have to get down low to see just how bright the emitters are makes me think they have a pretty narrow throw, and that worries me a bit for doing it myself. I like great big lights on the back of my car - the 80s were great for me that way. I want everyone to see that I'm slowing down, and react accordingly.

[Compaq888]

Nice little project. In my last car I replaced all the rear lights to LED's. It took some money because some led's were very dim. So I had to test out which were better and etc. With all the LED's replaced, and the aero stuff on the car I went from 24mpg combined to 32mpg combined. Not bad for a gas guzzler.

[BrianAbington]

Originally Posted by elhigh

Binger, I like it. I have one question, though: Do the LEDs have a narrow viewing angle? Your statement that you have to get down low to see just how bright the emitters are makes me think they have a pretty narrow throw, and that worries me a bit for doing it myself. I like great big lights on the back of my car - the 80s were great for me that way. I want everyone to see that I'm slowing down, and react accordingly.

No, they can be seen from the side very well, look at the picture from about 60ft away and look at how bright the light is on the ground, how wide its spread is and how bright it is on the side of the pickup truck that I was standing next to. There was some concern expressed by others about them being to bright for drivers directly behind me. For some one in a vehicle they will be fine.
What I was saying was that inorder for them to be to bright I had to get down on a knee directly in thier line of sight.

Oh yeah...thanks for the compliments guys. I know they don't look the greatest but they get the job done. and from a safe following distance they look pretty sweet.

[Daox]

I think its pretty easy to see that those lights are very bright. Nice job!

[Ryland]

I bought some of the bright LED 1157 bulb replacements from superbrightleds.com and have been very pleased with them, brighter then stock light bulbs, they fit in the standard socket without any fabrication, and if I change vehicles or want to I can easly move them to another vehicle instead of leaving them with the vehicle.