LED lighting upgrades

[merrill77]

Pleased with my H4 LED upgrade, I decided to upgrade the rest of my lights to LED.

My '77 has:
(2) 1157 amber Front running/signal
(2) 194 amber Front/sides signal
(2) 89 courtesy (driver/passenger footwell)
(2) 1157 white/red Rear running/signal/brake
(2) 1156 white Reverse
(2) 212-2 white courtesy (ceiling/dome)
(1) ? license plate

I found LED versions for most of those a few weeks ago and had time to work on it today. Here are pics of the lights I've installed so far.


First, the dome/ceiling courtesy lights. On the left is the original, LED on the right. Besides being much brighter, it is also much whiter. I used these LUYED LY-10042 for $9/pr which Amazon claims does not fit the car (but does...perfectly).



Next, the tail lights, for which I used iBrightstar 1157-3014 3030-54 3R at $17/pr. LED is on the right - it is much brighter than the incandescent.




Moved on to the reverse lights. I used iBrightstar 1156-3014 3030-54 3W at $16/pr. LED is on the left. Hard to tell from the pic - the LED is a little brighter and much whiter than the bulbs they replaced.




Next, the front side signal lights. I used LUYED LY-10250 at $14/pr. First pic is the old bulb (which was barely visible in daylight). Second pic is the LED.

[fulsizjeep]

Wow, the LEDs could burn retinas. Nice touch.

[merrill77]

Here is my youngest, Ethan, helping me with the front running/signal lights.



These lights didn't work out. I bought iBrightstar 01157-3014/3030-54/3Y ($17/pr). I expected them to work since they are the same as the brake/signal lights I bought but in amber...and the originals are the same 2-filament 1157 as the tail lights, but with in amber. These have the correct (dual) connectors on the bottom, but the lights are always on full-bright and they don't blink. I figured I'd ordered the wrong thing but after checking at what I bought, I am now not sure why they don't work.

Here is what they look like at (what I assume is) full brightness, compared to the original with the running lights on. But no blinky.

FAIL!



I also have not found a replacement for the #89 driver/passenger floor courtesy lights, yet.

Also, here is a video of the tail lights blinking. I don't think the video captures the brightness difference very well. But you can see the instant-on/off difference.

[mp4]http://christophermerrill.net/jeep/77wa ... -flash.mp4[/mp4]

Ooops, doesn't look like our site supports HTML 5 video Try this link to download and watch it. If your browser is at all modern, it should work.

[Rinkle_Stinkle]

maybe a stupid question so I apologize in advance. would these also work in an 88?

[merrill77]

Most of them will...possibly all. Certainly in the fixtures that take the same bulb. You should check each of your fixtures for the bulb type. For example, you don't have the same front signal/running light, but I think yours also takes an 1157 (IIRC - I had an 87 for a few months).

If you replace all the signal bulbs with LEDs, then you'll also need to replace the flasher. I did that first, and had some trouble as I found that AMC wired the flasher backwards from the standard. See my post on my LED flasher swap.

[bwwhaler]

Thanks so much for your informative threads on changing the bulbs over, I will get to this eventually, and it's nice that you have done such a good job with the links, etc.... Thanks again, and I hope to see you and your waggy at ECI in June.

[merrill77]

I'd like to. But it looks like I'll be backpacking with our boy scout troop that weekend

[az chip]

The best LED upgrade I have ever done was the lights in the garage to lEDs. Bugs are not attracted to them!

[merrill77]

So after double-checking the amber 1157s I ordered for the front running/signal lights are correct, I though I'd pop one into the tail light housing to confirm I didn't receive a defective part. I did not - the ambers work as they should. Check.

Next, I double checked that my no-load flasher will really work under no load by removing the front, side and rear signal bulbs. After doing that, I can hear the flasher happily clicking away, at precisely the same interval, even with no lights to flash.

So I set out to document what states the signal lamps are or not flashing...and I gotta admit I'm a little flummoxed by the result. In short, the lights flash correctly with all LED replacements unless the running lights are on. With the lights on, then the lights do not flash with LEDs in all three locations (front, front/side, rear).

Trying different variations gave me an interesting variety in behaviors...so I made a chart, hoping to see something that would bring a solution to mind. It did not



If I keep an 1157 incandescent in either the front or rear, signals will flash. Or if I remove the side marker light entirely. Ok, the side marker can't flash if it is missing...but the incandescent was so dim, that is not much of a downgrade from it working as it did before. None of those are very palatable. I've looked a bit at the wiring diagram, but I must admit I'm still pretty confused.

It appears that I can't have everything upgraded as easily as just changing bulbs...which is a shame because all the LEDs really do look much nicer.

I am so close. And yet...not that close at all. <sigh>

[tgreese]

I would trace out the circuit on a big piece of paper, then follow the current for each state. The only difference between an incandescent and LED should be the amount of current they pass. An incandescent bulb also has a large turn-on surge since the cold filament has a much lower resistance than when hot. This is only instantaneous though.

It's known that the flasher will not work when the polarity of the terminals is reversed. If the supply voltage goes negative when the sides are on, then the flasher would stop working ... I'd think.

You can work this out if you are systematic and understand the circuit. The flasher circuit involves a lot of wires and switching, and I think you'll need to trace it out to understand it.

One alternative would be to put the mechanical flasher back and bypass all your LED lights with a resistor, so they draw as much current as an incandescent bulb would. Or just bypass one set of bulbs in one of your problematic states and see if that works. You can determine what resistance to bypass with from the power form of Ohm's law P=IV=I^2R=V^2/R if you know the wattage of the original bulb.