Andringa

Waiting to hear back from Fuzzy over at CadillacForums, but I'm not positive that those cheap ones that he linked to are exactly the same.

Their description appears to indicate that they have 2x CREE and 8x Samsung LEDs where as the more expensive Ebay listings indicate that they have 10x CREE LEDs.

You may have just paid more for a better product.

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

I received my two pairs of lights on Tuesday and I must say that these are even brighter. Of course this is expected due to the "50W" claim and higher lumen value.

I am extremely impressed by the white ones (reverse lights). I just wish the overall design had a more even spread of radial LEDs versus the current four pairs on the perimeter and one pair firing forward design. I believe this would better mimic a traditional filament bulb's near uniform firing pattern.

I only mentioned the above due to the design of my turn signal housing (below).



As far as the projection lens is concerned, I noticed it less when using these amber 3157 LEDs for my turn signals. I attribute this to two things. First, I believe that these bulbs are longer than the ones [that I tried with a lens] before, thus bring them closer to the actual housing (smaller hotspot as the lens approaches the lens of the housing). Second, the lens on these bulbs is smaller in diameter.

The hotspot is there but only if you really look for it. The LEDs are so bright that the hotspots get drowned out by their intensity.

I'll post some pictures later.

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

Finally got around to uploading these pictures...

25W up top and 50W at the bottom:



Hotspots (50W in both):



25W:



50W:



50W amber in turn signal housing (ust the parking light; turn signal/hazard isn't active):

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

Man this LED craze is gonna run me dry...

Here's the latest and greatest:





"60W." It looks like the lens can be removed on these as well.

I think I'm gonna bite.

wes8398

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for the follow-up posts guys. I haven't got the switchbacks installed yet, but here's what I wound up buying. The prices were right, and the seller was absolutely fantastic to deal with. I had a ton of questions for him before I bought anything, and they were completely awesome with answering every single one of them. I have the reverse lights, parking lights, side marker lights, license plate lights, and interior lights installed and am very happy with them. Only thing that bugs me is that my headlights appear much more "purple" than the 6k colour temp of these LED's. They're OEM headlights bulbs as far as I know, but from all angles except staring directly into them, they look purple-ish white. The LED's are a more blueish white. I'm sure this mismatch will eventually lead to me getting some eBay halo headlights and trying to match all the bulb colours a bit better. First thing's first, I need to get these switchbacks installed though.

SWITCHBACK DRL/SIGNAL BULBS

REVERSE BULBS

PARKING/SIDE MARKER/LICENCE PLATE BULBS

INTERIOR BULBS (Different seller...just as happy with product though)

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

Wow, I guess you haven't been paying attention to this thread: those turn signals and reverse lights are terrible; I and others have dealt with them years ago. They're of an older type which doesn't quite cut it. They're called "SMD" (silly name since they're all surface mount[ed] devices) LEDs with terrible light output; worse than filament bulbs IMO. That is why they'd put so many of them together like that.

Anyway, I didn't purchase the 60Ws because I now see that the 80Ws are on the market and it seems like the lens can be removed. This means that anyone looking for some 50Ws that are cheaper than what's available online and doesn't want to wait 298743047534798 weeks for shipping from China is welcome to PM me... in 5640461374062 weeks once I get these 80Ws to test out.

I honestly think my 50Ws for my reverse lights are good but I'm very interested in seeing what 80Ws has to offer. I definitely would like to increase the light output from the turn signals and I think that stepping up to 4 forward firing LEDs (from 1 LED in the 25W bulbs to 2 LEDs in the 50W bulbs) should do the trick.

The following are indeed 16x 5W CREE LEDs per bulb and not 4 forward firing CREE LEDs and some Epistar 5W LEDs on the side like another seller offers.





EDIT: You also should have purchased some "LED decoders." That way you won't have to splice into your turn signal harness; plug and play. One per flashing bulb.

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

I would have to agree with you there. I believe that both of use have experienced the same brightness of the 2 CREE LEDs which are forward firing.

wes8398

iTrader: (2)

I haven't been paying attention to this thread? Quite the contrary, actually. I've paid plenty of attention to this thread, as well as done plenty of my own independent research. There comes a point where one must make their own decisions and try things for themselves though, and that's what I have done. Thankfully my decisions were well informed ones, thanks to sources such as this forum and others. One thing I've learned is that LED "technology" changes by the day, and that there's pretty much an infinite number of options for any given application these days. The newest isn't always the "best" though. And often times, new brand names or descriptions are passed off as new "technology"...like the CREE craze. CREE is simply a manufacturer, not a certain type of LED.

I personally am VERY happy with the bulbs I purchased. IMO, they were a far better choice than bulbs which employed "projectors" and produced brutal-looking hot spots and so on. The bulbs I put in to replace my reverse bulbs are WAAAY brighter than the OEM bulbs were, and the light is very nicely dispersed throughout the lens/housing. I also installed the switch back bulbs (without tapping into my signal wires) to experiment with how they'd look, and they are also FAR superior to the OEM bulbs and also have zero hot spots and disperse the light very nicely. Again, very happy with them. Just haven't had the time to get the wiring done yet.

Which brings me to another issue with what you've said. Those "decoders" do not magically make switch back bulbs work with our cars. From what I can see, they're simply fancy-looking, expensive load resistors that stop the bulbs from hyper flashing. A simple inline resistor came with my switchbacks which will serve the same purpose. And I will still have to run that 2nd signal wire to the harness. There's no way around that. Not a big deal anyway.

BamfinCTS-V

Here is what I went with.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/morei...led-tower/633/
To get the LED light to blink normal, not hyper blink, I had to install thees guys as well.
http://www.superbrightleds.com/morei...istor/191/832/
Not the best pic showing the lights but you get the idea.

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

Yes, the "decoder" box is for any computer and flashing-related issues. It is a plug and play solution versus splicing into the harness. You're using switchbacks so I guess splicing is inevitable. I'm not well-educated in switchbacks because they don't particularly interest me so there may be a splice-free solution.

But what happens when the resistors go bad (and they do go bad)? Splice again? That's not something I'd be interested in re-doing over and over. I've had two resistor packs go bad for my tail lights. It's a good thing they're plug and play. Now my front passenger resistor is acting up. It and the driver side one will be replaced by these plug and play units. Unfortunately for me, those plug and play decoder boxers weren't quite available when I went through those tower LEDs you just bought.

And CREE is indeed an LED manufacturer. They're based here in the USA and they're the top of the line at the moment. At one point in time, all of their LEDs were made right here in the USA.

A brief look at their quality: it takes 45 individual LEDs to produce 220 lumens of visible light from the bulbs that BamfinCTS-V linked. On the flip side, it takes only 5 CREE XP-E LEDs, in radial distribution, to produce 535-570 lumens. Even with your 60 LEDs, you're still not coming close to the 25W CREE bulbs. Oh, and the 25W bulbs that I had on my vehicle, and still have, were optioned without the projector lens.



I've been through all of the above and while the 5050 LEDs are brighter than those 3528s, the CREEs are definitely the brightest out there. So much so that you can even find cheaper bulbs that will solely use CREEs for forward firing applications and use cheaper LEDs firing radially.

Not to mention that those towers are pretty damn ugly and look hacked together with their exposed PCBs.

wes8398

iTrader: (2)

I appreciate the info, but I'm still perfectly happy with the bulbs I got. It doesn't make much difference to me if the bulb needs 100 LEDs or 5 LEDs to produce the brightness I want, as long as it still fits in the housing. The same can be said for the bulb's appearance. Once it's in the housing, I couldn't care less how "ugly" it is.
I don't know much about those "decoders", but some preliminary searching tells me that they're simply dressed up resistors .... And expensive ones at that. I suspect that if a resistor craps out on you, so well these "decoders".

wes8398

iTrader: (2)

Yes, the switchbacks require a 2nd signal wire to be run to the plug/harness in order to activate the switchback feature.

I appreciate the info, but I'm still perfectly happy with the bulbs I got. It doesn't make much difference to me if the bulb needs 100 LEDs or 5 LEDs to produce the brightness I want, as long as it still fits in the housing. The same can be said for the bulb's appearance. Once it's in the housing, I couldn't care less how "ugly" it is.
I don't know much about those "decoders", but some preliminary searching tells me that they're simply dressed up resistors .... And expensive ones at that. I suspect that if a resistor craps out on you, so well these "decoders".

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

I'm going to have to call you out on your statements above in bold with the following:

It looks like you didn't pay much attention. However, I do feel like you truly wanted some help after going through the eBay LED headache. You stated that some bulbs you bought looked like "like ****" with your "new clear fogs." You even stated that you have done "a huge amount of research on the topic." That's quite the contradiction to what you're saying now.

What was the purpose of this thread then? To drum up three pages worth of replies only to back out? Why won't you accept the facts in front of you with respect to the different LEDs proposed? Even at the behest of two Electrical Engineers (not that being an EE is a prerequisite for trial and error), you ended up buying, old, expensive bulbs which put you back at square one. Not even a pair of those latest 80W CREEs cost that much. I guess you got "sucked into the wattage game" that FuzzyLog1c mentioned, lol.

Your original post for reference:

wes8398

iTrader: (2)

I'll say it again... I appreciate everyone's input and I certainly DID pay attention to all of it.

I see you're having a hard time digesting this, but just because I didn't follow the information to a tee doesn't mean that I didn't take it into consideration. To be honest, I just got fed up with searching through all the different products and information and I just went ahead and purchased my bulbs from a vendor who I believed deserved my business because of the excellent customer service they provided. Also, I wasn't finding switchback bulbs which employed CREE LED's. Given that switchbacks were what I was building the rest of my order off of (I wanted everything to be from the same manufacturer and vendor so I could be sure colours would match, etc), I went with the same LED technology that the switchbacks employed for the rest of the bulbs I got as well.

I'm not "back at square one" at all, actually. I'm currently happy with where I'm at, and this has been my FIRST shot at LED's. The other eBay bulbs I'd bought were various cheap-o incandescent bulbs which I wasn't happy with.

Again, I'm more than happy with what I've got. Hopefully they hold up. And if they don't, I thankfully have this thread to refer back to for my next kick at the can. In terms of brightness, I'm well aware that I could have gotten brighter bulbs. Thankfully though, I am quite happy with the brightness of the bulbs I got.

Again... I thank everyone for their input and for taking the time to post up their experiences and knowledge. Cheers!!

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

Fair enough, but those incandescent bulbs can be purchased at your local parts store... There isn't much variety.

At any rate, to continue on with this thread, I purchased the following last week for my 194 license plate bulbs:



They should be arriving in 7841374074651230 weeks from China.

I currently have some low-end LEDs in there from a good 2-3 years ago that do a decent job of replicating the stock 194 bulb, albeit whiter in color.

The license plate housing in my vehicle is very small, has no type of reflector in it, and relies on the uniformity of an incandescent bulb to fire downward onto the plate. It's a bad design in my opinion but I guess it gets the job done [poorly].

With that said, I cannot purchase just any 194 LED bulb. The bulb needed for my application needs to fire downward when installed; LED must be mounted on the same plane of the contacts. I know this because I've been through MANY 194 LEDs. Also, the total length cannot exceed the length of the 194 bulb (~1"/25.4mm) by a few millimeters.

Some of the pros of this bulb is the use of the new CREE XB-D LED chip. This is a step up from the XP-E chip from the previous comparison chart/picture in this thread; it's also listed in the chart below and yes, the lumen values are all over the place. This XB-D chip is also being used in the new 80W CREE bulbs. Another pro is that they are 25.5mm in length so I'm pretty confident that they'll fit.



While the 194 bulb above contains 3 chips, I can only really use the one facing downward. I am, however, confident that it may be enough due to the light output from the single forward firing CREE XB-D chip in the 25W bulbs I had for my reverse and turn signal lights. I even faced the 25W reverse lights downward to see what a single 5W bulb would look like when I got them back in May.

One con with this bulb that I can envision is the socket type. I honestly prefer the plastic socket over the contacts-on-PCB style. I say this because I've been through some where they just don't fit while others have been too loose.


^tongue-in-cheek

wes8398

iTrader: (2)

Posts here have had me looking into these "high power" CREE XB-D chipped bulbs too, and that's led me to a question on the topic of resistors/decoders. When you go with one of these "high power" 25, 40, 60, 80 watt bulbs, are the resistors still necessary? Or does the higher wattage mean that they wont hyper flash or cause errors, since they're a similar wattage to the OEM incandescent?


Also, I did a little research on those LED decoders that were mentioned earlier and just wanted to post up a reply from a vendor when I asked them what the advantages/differences between load resistors and decoders were. Here is the answer I got from this particular vendor:

"Hi,

The difference is that decoders are easier to install but metal resistors have higher and more stable load. In our opinion, metal resistors are better. But if you don't want to work with wires, decoders would be a better choice.

Thank you."

That's pretty much in line with what I heard from other vendors as well. Just an FYI for people trying to decide between one or the other. The theory that the resistors will fail at a higher rate than the decoders is just plain marketing BS too. The "decoder" is basically just a resistor itself.

90G60

iTrader: (1)

I've seen several sets on Ebay. Looked through the member directory, and couldn't find any user with the name "neondials".

Where the sets that neondials was selling cheaper/good quality? I'm guessing the Ebay sets are Depots.