may need uncle dan on this one, sages- read an article in the feb 2012 auto restorer mag on improving lighting specifically tail lights on older vehicles, specifically here a 55 chevy. said that socalled high intensity bulbs were not a real improvement over stock, but halogen tail bulbs and led 1156, 1157 were a significant improvement and recommended. remember reading an earlier article on this by sl6 dan, one of my favorite uncles. if i remember correctly uncle d advised against led tail light bulbs due to shorter distance illumination of them also against halogen tail lights due to excessive heat. his recommendation made sense at the time. wondering if the word on these lights has changed. if danno or other sages are out there, would appreciate advice. not even sure if these bulbs are legal replacements . thanks tons bob f

An old car buddy of mine installed a set of LED taillights in his 55 Chevy. We usually travel in a pack six to ten to car shows, and have followed his car many times. Short of it is; LED retrofitted taillights for a 55 Chevy suck. There are ten or more little dots of light emitted from lens to be seen during daylight that are hard to see.

Factory designed LED tail lights I fined distracting as well. Yea they may be brighter, and come up to full lumens quicker than conventional bulbs, but in close traffic my eyes get burn-in from the damn things. I don’t particularly like the instant on aspect of the beast as well.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

I switched over to LED's in the duster, but I didn't use replacement bulbs. I sourced 12 inch white LED strips and retrofitted them into the tail light housings. I have 2 strips in each of the 4 lenses. A set each for tails and brake/turn.

I don't have a problem with day or night visibility. In fact, a couple friends told me that they're a little on the bright side especially at night. So I may end up swapping them out for red to dim them down a bit.

WHOAH. Wrong way to do it, bigtime.
Yeah, you do, you just don't realize it. It sounds like you care at least a little, which puts you head and shoulders above the goofs who think their car's lights are toys rather than life safety equipment.

"Visibility" means way, way more than just "Do they light up real bright?". It is not impossible to make your own LED car lights and come up with something adequately safe for use in public-roadway traffic, but it is a great deal more difficult than most people realize. See threads here and here for two examples of homemade LED light projects with the right amount of thought, effort, understanding, and technique behind them to be probably safe. Seriously, everyone reading this thread ought to go read those threads. Even if you don't care a whit for the technical stuff, the amount of craftsmanship that went into the mods is a beautiful thing to see.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Oh, hooray, another hobbyist magazine article advising people to go out and do dumb, illegal things to their cars' lights. It's like a flippable-paper version of the SEMA show in Las Vegas. "LED bulbs" do not ever work safely or effectively, which is why they are illegal. This is the case for any "LED bulb" in any taillamp originally designed to accept a filament bulb. The problem is with the concept, not with any particular design(s) of "LED bulb". See here (whole thread, all links). See also here on AllPar.

The halogen 1157 (etc.) is also a poor idea. All of them sloppily made; filament is never in the right place. I've never seen one that isn't massively overwattage (50/15w is typical, where a stock 1157 is 27/8w). This throws a 100% overload on the circuit, which in addition to the obvious dangers that poses, also makes the stop lights very slow (in relative terms) to come up to full intensity, which severely degrades the safety performance of the stop lights.

The only halogen bulb worth using in place of a regular one in any of our cars' signal systems is the #796, which is a 35w halogen bulb with filament in correct place to replace 1141, 1076, 1156, etc. in reversing (back-up) lights. The slight extra wattage combined with their short runtime, only while you're reversing, and the lack of any consequence to a slower rise time, mean the large improvement in rearward seeing is gained with no negative consequences. 796 produces 62 candlepower; 1156 and 1076 produce 32 candlepower, 1141 produces 21 candlepower.

More on rise time: you want the stop lights to come up to full intensity as fast as they possibly can -- that gives following drivers the maximum possible time in which to react to your having applied the brakes. Zero rise time is ideal, and LEDs provide that, but again, they have to be properly engineered; an "LED bulb" has zero rise time, but that does not compensate for the severe deficiencies in the rest of its performance.

For those who lack the tools, expertise, and equipment to make their own safe and effective LED lights, and who are wise enough to avoid the fast-talking profiteers—think SEMA again!—who pawn off this kind of garbage (long ugly thread), but who gotta-just-gotta have LED lights, you can sometimes get clever with ready-made truck/bus LED lamps placed inside the lenses of your car's original lights. You have to be careful to get the placement right; they need to be upright, facing straight, without any slant, tilt, or inward or outward rotation (the exception is the units made specifically for postal trucks with a 7° forward tilt to the rear surface where the taillamps are mounted). If the units you pick have a "TOP" marking, it must be at the (duh) top. My favorites are these, these, and these, in clear-lens variety when available. They are inexpensive, well made, and give very good performance. Another good option (smaller but more costly) is these:



If you try a project like this, make sure to select units meant to produce the correct functions. Front turn signals are not the same as rear ones (fronts are brighter), for example, and tail or marker lights do not serve as adequate stop lights, even though they might both be red. There are some fairly esoteric exceptions and asterisks to this caveat involving the smaller round LED units linked and pictured in this post; if anyone actually pursues it I'll get into it with them.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I'm fairly certain I don't have a visibly problem. The strips I'm using aren't your run of the mill accent light strips. The emitters are Cree XRE rated at 107 lumens each at a steady 6v. They're mounted on an aluminum heat sink strip. I had to trim them down and lose a few emitters to fit in the housings then curve them for a wider viewing angle. Each "lens" has 22 emitters installed. 11 top and bottom.

A friend of mine built my drivers for a steady 8.4 volts. Anything more and the output is just too overpowering at night not to mention the small enclosures may end up melting.

I'm fairly certain you have at least one, probably more, just by dint of your apparent lack of knowledge or interest in how tail and stop lamps must work in terms more specific than "light up bright red" and "light up dim red" and "Yup yup, looks good to me!".

Horse, meet water.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

You know Dan, I have read this thread and skimmed the others you linked to, and I would once again like to express my thanks to you for spending the time and energy to try and educate car hobbyists about automotive lighting and to protect them from shoddy and dangerous products. You bring clear technical analysis and a wealth of knowledge and information to the debates and evaluation of lighting products. You catch a great deal of crap from many people for giving brusque and sometimes biting commentary, but such comments are really not deserved. Your comments shine the cold light of logic and science through the murk of profiteering and the haze of advertising. Critiques like yours are necessary and invaluable, and you do it all for free. And you keep doing it after getting repeatedly insulted.

I salute your dedication to helping other and the depth of your knowledge. You really are a great resource and we should all be very happy you take the time to save us from making horrible mistakes that have a strong possibility of killing us. Thank you.

You're welcome and thank you. Now could somebody please post How To Cure The Flu In Ten Easy Minutes?

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

In high school I too swimming and scuba diving classes. I found that the best way to clear my sinuses was to dive to the bottom of the 13 foot deep end of the pool (increases pressure by roughly 1/3 of one atmosphere). I would exhale strongly at the bottom of the pool and my sinuses would usually void themselves due to the increased pressure. The fact I was in a pool made for easy cleanup.

My sinuses aren't in such bad condition. My lungs are full of mud. I am coughing like a damn smoker. Which makes my throat hurt. Which makes me cough more. Which increases throat irritation and sends more mud into my lungs. Which makes me get on here and complain.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Ah. In that case, Ricola and sleep. I hate being sick.

Ya know Reed.... I think you're wrong. I've been reading this forum for a while now and it seems that about half the hell he catches is warranted.

"If it ain't Dan's way or the way of someones ass he's been suckin.... Then it ain't the right way"

Don't get me wrong, there IS quite a bit of valid knowledge on this board. From Dan especially. But the Elitism here sickening.


Adios................

…but you can't make it drink.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

If you see this SDale, I hope you at least read through the threads Dan linked to in his posts. In them he presents reliable and repeatable scientific data as to why most retrofitted LED tail lamps do not meet current safety standards and are a bad idea. You should read them for your own safety's sake.