Thread: Helpful info about LED lighting

I'll head over and check it out. I have done some major reading on the LED usage and legality on the exterior lights in the past. I still wonder why we can't use white LEDs with Extra high lumens as our headlights. They could be brighter and whiter than the new HIDs. No heat either.

Hehe. Done that before too.

[AUS] I thought you might want to know that jaycar, have little pcb's, for turning your stop/tail/turn and interior lights to little LED lights. Apparently (So i have read in an AD) The LED's are brighter and because they illuminate instantly when stopping from 100km/h they can shorten stopping distance by up to 5 meters. I was like wow. I am keen to give it a go, next time one of my globes blow i will try it myself.

My SVX has LEDs that I replaced. Not the cheap 10 bucks ones you get from autostores but a huge matrix of LEDs on each stop light at the back. All I can say is that they make a huge difference between stock lamps since those take a while to light up compare to LEDs. Also, LEDs are a lot brighter as well. With all 4 LEDs on, I can light up a whole city block. The they are fully street legal since they came out of a truck tail lamps. The whole set of LEDs set me back about 150 bucks but it's well worth the price.

Yes the thing about LED's not generating heat is certainly not correct. They run cooler at the same lumen output as an equivalent incandescent, but they actually run quite a bit hotter at the same power levels.. Ie a 5W light bulb does not get as hot as a 5W Luxeon STAR. Yowch.

Finally some good info is coming out on retrofitting BMW's OEM LED tail lights into older BMW's.. This is probably a modification that I will do sometime soon. They are really slick but at ~$500 for the upgrade it's a bit pricey..