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LED Turn signals 21W!

5K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  wrench567 
#1 ·
#2 · (Edited)
I would not buy automotive LEDs from ebay unless I was saving a huge fortune.
Reason - no warranty. I bought my fog leds from superbrightleds and have already had to replace one of the sides twice in 3 years (SBL has a great warranty/customer service dept). LEDs, and I mean the individual diodes, don't fail often, but they have internal control circuitry (resistors, capacitors, etc) that you can't access/fix and those components do fail if they are poor quality and will render the entire bulb inop. Warranty is important because you need a manufacturer that trusts the quality of his/her product.

Get something that offers a 2 year or greater warranty. LEDs are expensive and you don't want to be replacing them when they fail.

-edit-
Also, LOL
"This item comes with built-in load resistors to make it work at full 21W power"
There is a resistor that wastes the power, it isn't being output through the LEDs.
 
#3 · (Edited)
I would highly NOT recommend for those bulbs.

Those LEDs will not pull 21W. It's just said has build-in load resister to prevent hyper flashing.

It's marketing scam pretty much. 21W they claim means nothing, probably just means that IF you adds up all emitters(LEDs) in bulb's absolute max power rating, it can see number of 21W total.
In this case, it's even worse because Built-in load resister is wasting power consumption somewhere.
(Absolute max rating means, number never should be exceeded even blink of moment.)


Beside, if such small heatsink receives 21W of power, it instantly burns off all LEDs.

Just for reference, massive heatsinked Prius, Lexus LED front headlight power consumption rate is about 15W~18W


According to description, it has built-in load resister, but remember that Load Resister itself also heats up. It convert excessive load into thermal loss to fake load to the system. Where those all heat goes in this bulb?
It directly going to thermally sensitive LEDs.



Those kind of cluster design LED bulbs has one critical problem

Non of LEDs are actually in focus point of designed reflector housing(=not simulating filament position)

If lighting point is not at focus point, all light source will scatter out of focus, which will make it seems to fill housing well, but no "strong throw" to the direction you want to be seen= from distance, you only see very whimpy illumination intensity.
 
#4 ·
I have a box full of Trash leds that I tested on my car. and to tell you the truth. Go buy LUMENS output. If the advertiser doesnt display the lumens, its because the stock lighting was already brighter! I have recently replaced led reverse signal bulbs. they were 10led in a cluster. They seemed bright. But i compared them to a set of 1500 lumen white ones and you can notice the difference immediately.

 
#5 ·
You want to watch out for lumen advertisement scheme too.

Many list how much lumen total possibly have IF all LED are driven at max drive rate, which never will happen in small PnP(Plug and Play) kind LED bulbs.


VLED V3 Triton, Elef bulbs have somewhat acceptable output but they are not exactly PnP, You may need slight housing modification depend on application.



For rear turn signal use, I found that if you pull more than 7W or so, it didn't cause hyper flushing in my case ( I have 2007 sedan)

Bulb I made was about was about 5W output at tail reading at emitter. Using buck driver, so input is 6.27W at tail light input measurement, pretty efficient driver. (Most of loss is bridge diode input)

Original emitter is prob BridgeLux or Cree CXA kind COB type.
Rated 10W rated max lumen to be about 600lm

Actual output in my system is 5W ( consumption is 6.27W)
estimated raw lumen is prob bit over 300lm but I filtered with amber lens.
So it will be close to 150-200lm equivalent.

If I wanted, I could advertise my system is 10W 600lm set up.
But I know that won't show any true info how bulbs perform.


BTW,,,with my 5W setting, amount of heat that LED generate is barely manageable with turn signal bulb size heatsink. (if it was constant ON operation(like brake lamp or DRL), it will kill LED by its own thermal damage)
 
#6 ·
Buy them if you want but they won't work on the 2014. You need a non polarity LED and a separate load resistor. The 2014 Mazda 3 has the tail lights and turns wired to different places in the sockets. Because an incandescent light will light no matter how the socket is wired an LED needs the right pin to light in the sockets. Some call them CK sockets.
Pete
 
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