I thought these were not street legal but apart from the chav mobiles I also notice my local buses all have LED indicator & stop/tail bulbs fitted. The tail led's are arranged so they display the sign of a left & right pointing arrow and when the brake lights come on they go brighter showing a full circle of led's. Just wondering if there's different rules for different vehicle classes?
as long as thay are made to the countries requirements, then they should be fine. i think they are better, as if a boulb blows that light will stop working, but if a led packs up you still have the rest of them to see you through untill you can get it replaced.
if i could get them for my "2002 astra estate" i would fit them.
Plenty of new cars have LED taillights too. Replacement LED units for ordinary filament ones aren't legal, as filament lamps give near 360 degree light output and have a rudimentary reflector to give the required output pattern. LED units give a very narrow beam, so require some form of diffuser rather than reflector.
Ah ha..., that'll be why they're so horrible and glary (?sp) then?
I have to say I dislike being behind a car with LED brake lights. Not only are they distractingly bright, they burst into full power much faster than a tungsten bulb which I suspect doesn't give your eyes as much time to adapt. (this could be bollocks mind you.) Maybe it's all just done to the lack of diffusers.
Tim
Decent replacement LEDs, mounted on a standard bayonet cap, do have a 180 degree spread, as they have radial LEDs to give the wider beam. Check out the ones available from places like
These are a nominal replacement for the standard 21 watt stop light etc bulb but don't give the same spread of light, or even the same intensity straight on. The forward pointing ones do give at least the same light straight on but not off axis. I'm pretty sure non of these is a legal replacement for a filament lamp - if I'm wrong please give details.
The other problen is that they flicker on some cars- Peugot CC for example.
Chris Bartram ( snipped-for-privacy@delete-me.piglet-net.net) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :
That's because the same LEDs are used for tail and brake - but the power is pulsed to give the effect of being brighter for brake.
Well, I recently made an LED replacement for a M/cycle rear light. Took it for an MOT and the tester was upset because the light dimmed in sync with the indicators. Took the lens off to look, and it was clear that it was an LED setup, but all tester was concerned with was this change in brightness (due to criticle voltage drop, rather than a bad earth - now sorted). By the way, this is several LEDs on a circuit board, not a plug-in replacement. Light is brighter, including stop lamp. I did use wide angle LEDs.
I was really referring to the type that are a replacement for a standard
21 watt stop etc bulb - they have to be approx the same size to fit into the type of lamp with rear access only, and it's not currently possible to squeeze in enough LEDs to give both the same dispersion and brightness.
AFAIK they must be "e" marked to be legal for road use, and when I investigated them a while ago there were no e-marked ones to be found; pity really as their attraction to me is that they don't blow like filament lamps do, and Previas seem to eat brake lamps for some reason (and are a bugger to replace, I wouldn't mind so much otherwise!).
According to an article a read on Car Mechanics magazine recently, they are planning to legalise them for headlights soon. too.
Think you're missing the point. HID headlamps have been around for some time, but there's no legal conversion. Same with LED taillights, etc. The problem is that filament optics and LED or HID aren't compatible.
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