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Led brake bulbs?

4K views 45 replies 8 participants last post by  Daijoubu 
#1 ·
I been looking for some led brake bulbs for my 94 camry I just got. Now I see these Pilot brand 1157 for about 20 bucks. They are cheaper at wally world that I seen. I wonder if they are any good? Or should I just order from super bright led?

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Automotive-IL-1157W-15-White-15-SMD/dp/B00GI77IIQ/ref=sr_1_31?ie=UTF8&qid=1426347474&sr=8-31&keywords=pilot+led[/ame]
 
#4 ·
I doubt they're any good. Most LEDs are not sufficiently bright for brake lights. They also shine light everywhere, which isn't very good for performance. They're overly diffused and thus even if they produce more light than an incandescent bulb (they don't), they will still be far dimmer.

If you want quality brake LEDs, get Philips Vision LEDs. They shine backwards, taking advantage of the optics of the taillight. This means that the taillight will be lit fully instead of just a bright spot in the middle, and it'll have a proper output to be comparable to the stock bulbs.

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Philips-12836REDB2-Exterior-Vision-Bulb/dp/B00P2D415K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426368917&sr=8-1&keywords=1157+philips+vision[/ame]

Here's a shot (refer to the upper half, ignore the lower half) comparing the Philips Vision in 7443 flavor (left) to an incandescent bulb (right). Same excellent performance but with the benefits of low current draw and instant on/off.

 
#6 ·
I highly suggest them! I have a set in my MR2 (shown) and plan to get another set to replace the inner brake lights that are still incandescent. Then I'll be getting 1157 versions for my Corolla as well. I really like em, I'm sure you will too. Buy one set, see if they work well in your housing. They work great in most housings but a few cars have weird taillights where those bulbs don't work well. The Camry has a very nicely shaped taillight so I'm sure it'll do well.
 
#10 · (Edited)
The Philips LED 3157 are quite expensive though, unless you can fit 1157 in there lol

I won't bother with resistor, wasted heat.
Just remove the bulb from your cluster or bypass the sensor (gen 4):

STOP LIGHT: Connect G-W pin 7 to R pin 1 and G-R pin 2
TAIL LIGHT: Connect G Pin 3 to G-O pin 9
or disconnect pin 4 (same as removing light bulb on dash)
 
#11 ·
Did the same thing in my Miata. Honestly it's not really worth it. Causes too much of a headache. The lower draw on the charging system is a great plus, and with some of the higher end LEDs you can get a brighter light, but even with all of those pros it doesn't outweigh the cons of the more complicated system. Failures are harder to trace, and even with the "name brand" LEDs you run into random failures for no apparent reason.
 
#13 ·
We ran into issues with the circuit boards for the brake lights. We had issues with the wires themselves melting because of a minute short in the LEDs that didn't show any symptoms of failure but increased the resistance to the point that it melted the wires. Had problems with sockets as well.

A lot of those capacitors increase the resistance to mimic a standard bulb but fail. Thus causing an over resistance and damaging other components. Fuses, wires, fuse boxes etc.

Oh, another fun failure (not my personal experience, but someone I knew) was the LED flickering, causing the appearance of a strobe light. You'd be amazed how fast you'll get pulled for something like that.

In your case though, I think you won't experience as many failures because you're using a well known companies lights. But the brand "Pilot" is simply a well known cheap company. It's been adopted by AutoZone and marketed as a good company but that's only because of the high profit margins on the products (worked for AutoZone as management for quite a while). Saw literal TONS of their products come back.
 
#14 ·
Oh so you mean in custom PCB retrofits? Yeah I can see how that would cause difficult to fix problems. And luckily my car has no bulb monitoring system so I don't use resistors. High end plug and play bulbs are pretty safe. VLEDS, Philips, Osram, etc. I wouldn't use cheap bulbs like Pilot anymore.
 
#15 ·
Yeah I agree. You're pretty much safe and sound if you use a well known company for your bulbs. But I've seen even the high end ones do some funny stuff lol. Honestly, I just stick with the high output standard lights. Almost the same brightness as LED's and they can be picked up from any parts store so you're never stuck with two different intensity lights in the rear. :lol:
 
#16 ·
And they're way cheaper too lol. It says something when a $7 pair of incandescent bulbs are brighter than many $45 LEDs. But I changed all my parking lights to Philips LEDs so they wouldn't drain my battery. I occasionally leave them on at night for visibility so it's nice to have that peace of mind.
 
#17 ·
WOW! Really? The drain difference is that significant? So you can leave the parking lights on all night with no worry of a dead battery in the morning? Out of curiosity, have you done the math to see the difference in drain? Or do you have the bulb specifics for both the LED and the standard bulbs?
 
#18 ·
Not all night of course, but sometimes for half an hour multiple times. I do delivery so I constantly start and stop my car, and at night if I double park I like to leave the parking lights on for better visibility. I'm sure the draw is way lower, a 7443 bulb draws 21W and many high power LEDs draw 4W at full load. Smaller filament is 5W, led is around 0.8 I think? Not sure about 194 bulbs, but the Philips Vision 194 draws exactly 1W. I can check on that info tonight.
 
#19 ·
Yeah, let me know because I'm super curious. If the draw difference is truly that substantial you could perhaps get a larger capacity battery (or use a standard capacity battery) and have little to no worry about killing the battery after having the parking lights on for 8ish hours.
 
#21 ·
Of course the "bulb out" warning is sometimes unavoidable with LED bulbs because they don't draw enough current and the ECU thinks its an open circuit. The solution is to add a big series resistor to the LED which gently heats and tells the ECU it has a nice incandescent bulb. Of course then the power saving is entirely MOOT. LEDs still last longer, and are (sometimes) brighter.

I can ignore the "bulb out" warning but some can't
 
#22 · (Edited)
So here is the data I managed to scrounge up. First, 194. An incandescent bulb is advertised as 4.5W, whether it draws that much I can't say. That would be a 0.32A draw. Most sources say 0.271A, so let's go with that. The super powerful Philips Vision 194 LED draws 1W at 0.07A. It's a TON brighter, I love them. Have them in license plate lights and front parking lights.



Onto 744x. A 7440 bulb draws 1.85A, rated at 25A at 13.5V. At full power, a 7443 bulb draws 1.75A, it's rated at 21W at 12V. Unfortunately I don't have specs for the Philips Vision LEDs, the packaging claims 2W at 12V but LED wattage tends to be higher than actual. However, this is a reputable company so it's more trustworthy than "80W from 10 emitters" on eBay. 2W from 10 emitters is believable. This means it draws only 0.167A at full power. This is almost 11x lower draw. Another reputable bulb, though not a great one, is the TRS Morimoto XB LED. It draws .24A, 3.36W. The newer generation are a bit stronger, 4.5W at 0.32A producing 600 lumens. Mugh higher than the Philips bulbs, but still much lower than an incandescent.

There is a huge power savings there, if you ask me. Replacing 8 parking light bulbs with LEDs will get you a much lower draw. Let me calculate mine.

I had 6 194 bulbs and two 7443 bulbs running at low power, so 1.626A from the 194s and 0.874A from the two low watt filaments of the 7443 (5.9W at 13.5V, .437A). That's a total of 2.5A draw. The 6 194 LEDs will draw .42A and the two Philips Vision LEDs, well I don't know. There's no separate filament, they run at a brightness percentage. It's probably around 40%, but let's say half. That's 0.167A. We end up with 0.587A, or less than .6A draw compared to 2.5A. 5x improvement or so!

If you want more info, there are wonderful people at HID Planet!
 
#23 ·
No that was fantastic. Yeah so with that logic then you really COULD run the park lights all night without killing the battery (still wouldn't do it). But wow. That's gotta be fantastically better on the battery and alternator.

I remember when I went to the LEDs in my Miata I didn't have the dimming effect when using any sort of extra power options.
 
#26 ·
My MR2 Spyder is 3 inches shorter than a Miata! I'm planning on installing some LED spotlights behind the rear grill on a switch. For visibility backing up and punishing people with their high beams on at night in the city (which is a larger number than expected). Oh and folks with HIDs in reflector housings.
 
#28 ·
Well lots of things happened. I sold my 91 camry. I got a 94 camry now.
So I found the bulbs at the local pepboys and they are 29.99 which is not bad. I don't really like buy stuff online due to the fact if something goes wrong there is no quick return. Finding those phillips leds at the parts store is like searching for that rare item!

So I have the 4 main brake lights on trunk lid and the quarter panel area. Where is the best location to put the led bulb? I would like to use 2 regular bulbs and 2 LED.
 
#32 ·
Give you my update soon.

Btw I took out the old bulbs and they were close to being done. The main filament for the brake light has one side of the "tower" melting and close to failing. All 4 of the bulbs are about the same. Is it me or they just make it super cheap nowadays?
My car had all sorts of bulbs. Like sylvania, phillips, a random china bulb, and a wagner? All about to fail and it is the same tower melting on one side issue.
 
#35 ·
Well here is a update to the phillips led bulbs. I liked them at first but I didn't noticed any big difference in the way people stop. Maybe I put on my brakes early on the freeway? Who knows. I ended up returning them and putting back the regular bulbs.
 
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