Technical LED bulbs for tail lights, brighter or not?

As much as I appreciate the glow of an incandescent bulb I am always watching people run up my ass when I am pulling off an exit or turning off the highway. Not as common around town but the way people run up on me on the highway I cant tell if they can see my tail lights well enough or not, and it seems every project I build has smaller than small tail lights. I am considering putting in LED bulbs and probably need to respray the reflectors as well since I am sure the silvering is not in good shape.
Has anyone tested the LED bulbs that are for sale everywhere on the net, and is a bright silver paint enough to help with reflecting the light back out the lenses or is there anything that works better other than resilvering?

 

You need to get ones that radiate light to the side as well as straight like an 1157. The ones that just have a flat led disk in an old tail light housing don't send any light to the reflector. In my buddies 40 Nash, they were no brighter than stock. We found some that look more like a bulb and they made a big difference.


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Try painting the reflector a Bright White instead of Silver.

 

I know they ain't traditional but I have installed them in my cars,you need all the light you can get when the idiot behind you is texting and not paying attention,and yeah,they are a lot brighter. HRP

 

I just picked up two LED bulbs that replace the popular 1157 bulbs and are going to try them in my Sons RPU. He has 37 Ford tail lights. He picked up a special flasher that will work with LEDs or regular bulbs to go with them. We plan on installing one and then standing back in the dark to see if the LED is brighter than the regular one.

They were not cheap at about $29 per bulb, but as Hotrodprimer said, you need all the light you can get in one of these old cars. This is the bulb we got:

http://www.westmarine.com/buy/dr-led--1157-dual-intensity-led-bulb-12v-white--15939887

Don

 

LED's are directional, so as was mentioned before, the superior type have a couple of rows pointing sideways as well as a circle on the end. I have tried a few types and found that some dual filament types don't fit early GM sockets without some "modifications"
to the bulb itself. Painting the reflector with white gloss paint reflects well. Trouble is,
you could put a landing light from a Boeing 747 at the rear of your car as a brake light and the flippin idiots will still run up your clacker!

 

Forget the bulbs and buy the insert board. 2X brighter.

 

Depending on what kind of tail lights you are putting on it there may be a premade led kit to fit inside them. We put deuce tail lights on the stock A stanchions on our model A with LED boards that are made to fit inside the tail light housing behind the stock glass lens. With the lights off it looks like a stock tail light. With the running lights on or the brake lights lit up they pretty much reach out and poke you in the eye and let you know that they are lit. Pretty bright in daylight and really bright at night.
Like Hot Rod primer said, not really traditional but a consession I am willing to make to keep the brain dead masses from running into the back of me.

 

You got that right Don,remember Randy (Deuce Roadsters) getting nailed? HRP

 

One advantage of LEDs is they don't require the same amount of current as regular lamps, so if your wiring to the lights is substandard they'll be brighter. But you can't convince me that they're brighter than regular lamps otherwise. Plus on most cars, the lens is designed for a regular lamp and the optics are optimized for those. Making sure the wiring to the lights is adequate and 'tuning up' the reflectors will give all the light you'll get. One possible exception to that is if you use a 'circuit board' type that mounts closer to the lens, but the 'replacement bulb' types have issues IMO....

 

wiring on all cars is "modern" mid 90s, so all good wire with a full 12v to everything. I want to try some in my 47 caddy and I also bought some to use in the current F1 build which will have 48 hudson tail lights on the fenders. Picked up some adjustable LED style flashers and some of these bulbs to try. The caddy has two bulbs on each side and I consider them a good size, yet people are still always right on me when I am slowing down and signaling to turn off.
I will also try the bright white paint on the reflectors as well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201025537305?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Jees just realized I bought red bulbs when all I needed was white lol..I will have to order some white ones.

 

Consider putting the tail lights up where people can see them. I do not understand why so many taillights are mounted as low as possible

 

one thing to note , when using a red lense use a red LED otherwise the lense will filter out the other colors in the light and it is not as bright and https://www.superbrightleds.com is the best place I have found for LEds in price and quality and there tech guys are great too .( they are in MO. )
but also I found that the low height level our tail lights are at also contribute to the no see problem , I am going to put a line of LEds at the base of my rear window to act as a huge third brake light as people notice them more . as people are too lazy to look for lights too as they have there noses pointed to the sky .

as for brightness , you have to use the formula to convert lumens to Candle power to compare them not watts . also knowing the color scale of kelvin helps too

 

They may help if people look up from their damn phones long enough to see you in time.

 

cant do anything about the position of the caddy lights. So I should use the red LED bulbs with the red lense? Figures, just ordered the white ones.

 

go with red as it will stand out more and also you might want to put a 3rd brake light in the back window the nice thing about the LEds is they are thin and no heat so you can hide them easily , they make strings already wired together so no soldering has to be done too . and Safety always trumps the not traditional aspect . but if you can hide it it can look the traditional way plus have the benefit of being safe . and a higher/brighter light also makes a difference for trucks that come up behind you too . even though when I drove I tried to keep my distance back from old cars as they are real hard to see the lights due to the heights and Candle power they had . specaily if the sun was to my back

 

and for the caddy I would use a SMD board style light as its almost a 180 degree light and the flat board can make it easier to fit in the lense hole .

 

Not only did I install LED lights on the rear, I installed a module that rapidly flashes the brakelights ,then stays on...As I remember it was originally for a motorcycle ...bought it on the Bay..relatively cheap..works great...I've had several comments from people that saw it in traffic and remarked how the flashing really got their attention...
I'm of the thought pattern ,that anything I can do to prevent some numbnuts from crashing into me the better...

 

My uncle used to put a turn signal flasher in the brake light circuit so when he hit the brakes it worked like 4 way flashers. Don't think it's legal though.

 

My answer to being seen. Started off as a joke but saved me several times. Soccer Mom, mini van and cell phone....bad combo.

 

LED's on all of mine. Not the bulbs, but the sealed complete units. I believe the ones in my 40 are Technostalgia and the ones on my F100 are United Pacific. Both bring comments from those who follow me about their ability to see them. I drive mine a lot, I want to be seen.

 

know some will be concerned about even safety changes to a traditional ride - running original glass lenses also take away from visibility of tail lights - as shared above, those of us that have experienced first hand being hit by another car while driving our hot rods prefer safety first.

 

Tonight we put one of the LED bulbs into the tail lights on Dans RPU and compared it to the 1157 bulb in the other side. Surprisingly, the regular bulb was brighter and also the LED put off a pinkish color instead of red . So, we pulled it out and put the 1157 back in.

Don

 

This spring I lost my brake lights on my avatar, and in exploring why I discovered they weren't connected through the turn signal switch. Seems the builder had installed 'super bright' brake lights as a separate lamp on each side. These were 55W halogen headlamp bulbs! Now, the interesting part was when I disconnected them and wired the brake/turns normally using the normal 27W 1157, I couldn't see any difference in brightness in sunlight. The only thing those bright lamps did was smoke my brake light switch (which turned out to be the main problem).

LEDs have been a regular favorite topic on a motorcycle forum I'm on. This particular bike has a rather limited charging system, so if adding electrical goodies you have to try to make it up somewhere else and LEDs are usually the first solution 'newbies' ask about or try. As lighting is the largest load and is pretty much the only one you can change, that's where they look. More than a few have reported that LEDs just don't show up in sunlight as well as regular lamps when installed in the existing lenses (one was rear-ended). The best results reported seem to be the guys that replace the entire OEM light with a purpose-built lamp/lens assembly but at the sacrifice of originality. Now, there are LED/lens assemblies available for some vintage cars, but IMO none of them look 'right' when installed.

And the irony of installing high-tech LEDs in a 'traditional' car.... This is just another 'old car' hazard guys, to go with the drum brakes and bias-ply tires. If you want to be seen, put a big ol' third brake light in the rear window.

 

I considered putting a big STOP red light in the back window during the build, but with the steep rake of the back window it didnt look like anything of size would fit without becoming a head rest for back seat passengers. I may have to revisit that. LEDs are fine for me as long as they are an improvement, they dont take away from the look of the car. I will take some pics once they arrive and see if there is a difference. I am sure Don is not the first to find out they were not better, but maybe they are with the correct reflector? Dont know.
If the LEDs are brighter they will go in.

 

My '39 teardrop LED tailights are 3x brighter as my originals when braking! I have the "Super Bright LED's from Yogis.

 

2357 is a brighter substitution for the old 1157 tail light bulbs.

 

I have unknown source (probably Speedway) LED brake lights in my 37. I don't have originals to compare to, but they are definitely very bright. They fit the housings well and aren't too obviously LED looking.

 

"Crazy Steve" is correct!----Install a thin led stop light up at eye level in that big rear window.
Over the years, following other '32's, the tail lights using stock 1157's are almost impossible to see when the sun is at that angle.
When doing my rebuild in 1996, I vowed to correct that problem of getting rear ended.
I used a third light module out of a Honda spoiler, 1 inch thick, about 8 inches long, installed at eye level on the rear upholstery "Roll", pretty much unseen, UNTIL hitting the brakes, THEN it lights up like a Christmas tree!!
Then installed led bulbs in both rear tail lights to make a definite bright signal, day OR night.

 

BTTT
LEDs aren't traditional, but living & driving around Washington DC, I'm seriously weighing *all* possibilities.