Thread: LED bulbs
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Old 01-06-2006, 11:42 PM
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Strife Strife is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: KY USA
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The single bulb replacements don't put out as much light, and don't put it out evenly - that is, they don't light behind them where the reflector bowl is. You can try it out but you may be disappointed. Also if you have cruise control and/or "light out detector" they may not work right unless you put in a resistor to soak up the current so that the total current of the LEDs (which will be less) and the resistor is about equal to that of the lamp (some of the newer and more expensive LED replacements actually have these resistors built into the base, I saw one of these somewthere on the Internet).

I made an LED taillight in my third tail light in my '86 560SL, but it uses 18 of the largest, brightest and most tightly focused LED's I could find on eBay. I made a circuit board for them that spaces them out evenly, 6 in 3 rows, and it just fits into the housing. The resistors are behind the panel in the third taillight housing. This turned out great, it's actually brighter than a bulb. But of course, it wasn't a screwdriver job, either.
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