LED Rear Light Bulbs??

Is it me, or are these LED's bulbs rubbish?

I bought 6 x 12v 21 watt for the reversing lights of our cars..

Tried one in the drivers side of the TF and to be quite honest they are c**p!
Hard to take photos but the led is in the bottom photo....

Not sure Gaz all I know is I keep blowing my blue head lamp ones so I have gone back to bright white :dry:


FB message and if you look at my slam panel request you will see why

Softly~Softly wrote:
FB message and if you look at my slam panel request you will see why

Well, here goes WW3, but I really cannot see the point of LED's for external lighting. Or any lighting for that matter, other than multi-state warning lamps. LED's were designed to be signal and control devices. The purest method of gaining light from a current flow is a filament lamp. People complain about reliabilty issues with F and TF then start fitting fiddly led lighting with resistors etc incorporated into the circuit. More complication! More to go wrong!
Now, led fans, bring it on!

Isn't it a case of the manufacturers turning to LEDs owing to their lower power draw and thus reducing load on the engine via the alternator, especially for DRL units which are always n in the day?

I agree though that the external LED lights can be a problem when retro-fitted to cars, especially older classics as the light is directional, or rather, the view of the LEDs is directional and although some retro-fit units for tail-lights have both radial mounted and rear mounted, the light is not diffused through the lens as well and on modern cars the LED units are not easily seen from the side.

John and Sue wrote: Well, here goes WW3, but I really cannot see the point of LED's for external lighting. Or any lighting for that matter, other than multi-state warning lamps. LED's were designed to be signal and control devices. The purest method of gaining light from a current flow is a filament lamp. People complain about reliabilty issues with F and TF then start fitting fiddly led lighting with resistors etc incorporated into the circuit. More complication! More to go wrong!
Now, led fans, bring it on!

The one and only reason I am changing to LED's is to get rid of the original dull and yellow tinged bulbs....
And if they are brighter that is a bonus.

gazsuttonuk wrote: The one and only reason I am changing to LED's is to get rid of the original dull and yellow tinged bulbs....
And if they are brighter that is a bonus.

Obviously, as you know, the yellow bulbs are just the front ones. The sidelight 7 led white bulbs I fitted and the inexpensive xenon 'plug and play' type lights are both still going strong after only 2 months. I use the sidelights as 'DRL' (Daytime running lights) because of the cars low profile. People do notice them and it makes me feel better when I see someone looking at the lights whilst apparrently thinking of quickly pulling out of a junction in front of me.

People often wrongly think smaller cars are slower cars, as we all know! It's not imagination for me to say that I've found that the little white sidelights modernise the look and make others think twice about taking that chance in pulling out quickly at junctions ahead of you. A common occurrence in todays hustle and bustle commuter world. The bottom line is that these 'front lights' have so far proved to be a worthwhile upgrade. They came from Birmingham and the link to buy them is in the post.

sidelights upgrade to 7 bulb led lights.



Xenon 'HID' Conversion discussion.



The tail lights I fitted were fine initially and plenty bright enough. Then after a few weeks a couple of the small led bulbs started flickering. That's great if you're 19 and sitting outside McDonalds. So, I re-inserted the old bulbs. I'd read the warning off Clive about cheap Hong Kong bulbs. Maybe some of the UK bulbs would be better next time.

Tail light bulb upgrade - MGTF Tail light change and upgrade guide.



I also tried some new brake light 36 led bulbs. For the size of them they didn't produce any great improvement and again some of the small led bulbs died after only a short while. So, that 'fail' never made it to a forum post. Here's some pics of them.









In summary - So far, I can only reccomend the lights that I've tried on the front of the car. They have upgraded 'the look' and they do get you noticed. However, it's only been around two months since fitting them.