LED taillight disappointment

Uh-oh. Damn.

Time for my "LEDs are great but don't do well in incandescent sockets" bit again.

LEDs are the future of most lighting, I firmly believe. Certainly there is nothing better for automotive use as they will outast the life of the car (no replacements ever needed) offer unmatched design flexibility, operate with much less heat (yeah, more on that later and how it pertains to the problem shown here), are lighter weight, are more directional (better for most signal applications), are safer (are far more likely to work after a collision, won't burn out and won't corrode in the socket), are more efficient and come to full brightness WAY the hell quicker than incandescents. In the long-run an LED-equipped car is cheaper and safer to own than one with incandescents. The problem is that it'll cost a few bucks more to buy it off the lot, and that's a deal-breaker for the car makers. But as I'll describe in excruciating detail below... we can't just blame the car makers for giving us what we've demonstrated we really want. We need a bit of introspection as well.

All these benefits of LEDs only really help when the light fixture is designed for them. When used as retrofits, they basically suck - and here's why: An incandescent NEEDs to be hot to operate. In fact they are quite efficient little heaters... and really poor sources of light. The sockets serve to insulate the heat that the bulb makes - keeping more heat IN the bulb to make it work better and to protect the rest of the light fixture from the heat produced. An LED is the other way around... it produces some waste heat, and for the LED to survive, that heat must be bled off. So you put a device that needs a heat sink into a fixture that thermally insulates it, and you have a problem. (See Justin's pic above!).

In this very thread I'm shocked to hear people saying $12-$15 is "expensive" for an LED bulb. Suffice it to say that when I was building/selling them for the Prius - mine were far more expensive than this! Of course mine were hand-made in small quantities - but the biggie is that they were made correctly. Fully regulated and driven at a level that would not create too much heat for the amount of heat-sinking included with the device (since the insulated socket can't really be used). designing and building these LED units to be bright and durable cost money. $50 for something it *appears* could be purchased from Hong Kong for $10. And there's the rub - we aren't willing to pay what it costs to do things correctly any longer as we as a society seem to be stuck in the WAlMart mentality. We want everything super-cheap... but gosh, we'd sure also like great attention to detail and proper design. We get upset when things are crap. We don't know what it costs to build things correctly since there's always a place that'll sell something similar for less. Rarely do we get the quality we want for the price we think is reasonable.

*And yes, I realize I'm being all preachy, but there you go.*

We have a situation in the US right now that sucks - and we brought it on ourselves. We don't buy quality, or locally-sourced stuff because we put far more weight on the initial cost of things. So we get marginally-designed, marginal quality imported crap for the most part. What is called "heavy duty" today wouldn't even be considered standard duty back when the US used to make stuff. Certainly not all imported stuff is crap - not even close. But the stuff we buy most of? You betcha. We demand it, and it is supplied.

I do apologize for my rant here... but felt like I needed to put some of this (price, quality and the reality of LED retrofits) into perspective. I'm not meaning to point any fingers - my comments are general. Justin already knows my feelings on LED retrofits, and I was definitely interested in what he'd find. And I'm sad it has turned out like this so far.

The goal here should be to push the car makers to do this right at the factory. Trying to stuff an LED retrofit into an incandescent fixture is not likely to give us what we're looking for. At best it might work "OK." At worst it is illegal (not DOT approved so you could technically be held at least partially responsible if somebody rear-ends you) and could damage your vehicle and even possibly harm you.

OK... somebody help me off my apple crate here.

 

You make a good point that LED retrofits work just OK.

There are enough success stories out there to give people hope that a $15 storebought LED will work for them. I'm guilty too.

You've replaced your bulbs with LEDs on every conceivble place and trust me, everyone would love to do what you've done but I think most of us are not electrical engineers.

Now, are we still on for this year? (Ill send you an email sometime soon)

 

Just for the record... neither am I. Not by a LOOOONG shot. And my EE friends would about die laughing if they heard that anybody thought that I WAS one.

Oh sure. I'm almost always ready for an LED party.

 

Cool.

Btw Darell, back to your other post cause I wanna try to understand the technical aspect of LEDs better. So are you saying the storebought LEDs with a heat sink are actually effective? Also, by what means is a bulb "regulated.". How do we know a storebought bulb is regulated or not, or does it go without saying?

 

Btw when I said that $13 was "kinda pricey" for an led, I meant relative to a $1 eBay bulb, which might dishearten you that even more people go with.

 

The pic isn't the best but here are the two partially melted but faulty LED tail light bulbs I used from AutoLumination.com. I repeat, do not buy these!

 

I still have my factory incandescent bulbs in. Will be 3 years without a problem in April. Lesson learned, LEDs are good, but only if the housings and electronics are designed to support them.

 

I've had LED header lights, door marker lights, back header light, and license plate lights since May of 2010 without problems or melting - in fact, they look great and get compliments from passengers and my dealership (not gonna tell them they are LED lights, or I will get MORE problems from them). Only interior lights I have not changed are the vanity lights, and the back cargo light. Of course, if I DID have a problem - I suppose I would not be in any danger if they stopped working, just use a flashlight... but still, seemed well worth the cost.

 

It's clear that there are places on the car where LEDs work fine and not so fine. That's what we're determining.

2010s may be different and less problematic. I do envy the fact that it's so easy to replace license plate lights on the 2010+.

 

You guys do know that to use LED tails, you have to remove the little red boxes, right? You can buy red LEDs so there is absolutely no reason to keep those stupid plastic boxes.

I've been using 5 watt V-LEDs with no meltdown. Bright and beautiful.

 

You have pics?

 

Indeed. Although it isn't very exciting. Just looks like the same thing but with no box!

I'll see if I can figure out how to upload later tonight.

 

Let's see, if you remove the red box, that means you have an infinite amount of room in the taillight. I imagine you can use something insane like this



Although that may melt some wires...

 

That isn't insane. I considered it. It won't melt wires. But I don't think it will be brighter than the 5 watt ones I am using. Just because it has more LEDs on it doesn't mean they are more powerful. Also, the ones I am using use the factory reflector so it looks like stock, only brighter.

And redder, too. The factory boxes are a bit orange looking.

For comparison, the incandescents are about 4 1/4 watts. The incandescent turn signals are 23 watts. I replaced those with 7 watt LEDs which appear brighter than stock. So 5 watt LED to replace 4 watt incandescent taillights is plenty.

And I don't think those folding ones come in the right size socket. And there's a limit to how bright you want the taillights to be. You don't want them to be as bright as the brake lights.