LED Brake Lights

[dn010]

Can someone tell me how many SMD is ideal for LED brake light bulbs?


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[Chris4099]

Tough to say, depends on the SME type. If you can, see if they list the lumen output. At least 200 is good, closer to 300 is best. The real safety aspect of LED brake lights is the instant on which grabs the driver's attention much faster then the normal ramp up of light that you normally get from incandescent. The power savings is nice too. Especially since the incandescent lights take a lot of power and you typically brake at idle which could cause a voltage drop.

[DMCVegas]

Throwing this out there, what about the beam angle as well? Light doesn't just come out of the center of the bulb, but bounces off of the reflectors inside of the housing to illuminate the entire lens. Otherwise you just end up with tiny dots that light up on the center, which isn't safer at all.

[DMC-Ron]

Often the listed lumens are for the white version of the bulb. When you can find lumen values specified for the red versions they are usually much lower values (you want to use the red bulbs because the white LEDs end up looking orange thru the red lens). I just installed some brake lights and the red lumen spec listed 130 lm. This was one of the brightest red values I have found. They are extremely bright and I am pleased with the results. These bulbs use the 5050 SMD segments and there are 26 segments on the bulb. This makes the bulb fairly large but it fits the DeLorean tail light assembly just fine.

Here's the link:
https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...Specifications

Ron

[Lwanmtr]

I went the easy route and got the LED kit from DMC..they plug right into the stock light boards and work good.

[dn010]

Thanks guys, I'll check out the link above. DMCH kit yes, problem is I already have every bulb in LED except the brake lights so a kit would be getting stuff I already have and wouldn't need unfortunately.