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Any advice on where to get ultra white 1157 parking light bulbs?

Joined
9 June 2004
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683
Location
Seattle
My hids make the stock parking lights look all yellowed and nasty. I need to upgrade parking lights too. Any advice on what and where to get these bulbs is appreciated..
 
I went to the link listed above. What is the deal with the LED light bulb replacements? THat seems like it might be a good solution to the dim bulb problems. Has anyone tried these?
 
Yeah, and which ones are best for the front Parking lights? Should I get "Narrow" or "Wide"?
 
I have the 1157s in my Civic in wide because of the headlight design on that car I wanted the people from the side to be aware of my turn signals. It's not as intense as a narrow beam head on.

The 194/168 wedge bulbs are what's used on the NSX parking lamp. The brightest one they make is the WLED-x6, I think even my PIAAs only have 4 LEDs.

For the lights in the doors, dome, trunk you will want the 3022-4 LED Festoon bulbs. Remember, LEDs are very directional and you kinda want to aim them when you snap them into place. These bulbs are an intense white color and give good light. What's cool is the spot lamp effect it has on the driver footwell, you can see the spots coming from each of the 4 LEDs shining down.

These all burn cool and don't draw much current. Be careful taking the festoons out as they could burn you if they've heated up. The other advantage is that the bulbs nearly last forever.
 
Yes, I believe the instrument cluster lamps can be replaced with these. It's been a while since I had my instrument cluster apart but from memory, I remember the bulbs looked a lot like the ones on the website, it's probably standard issue on instrument clusters. I don't remember if you needed the base though.
 
I got the WLED-x6 led for the front parking lights that are mentioned in Mailbu's earlier post - I already the PIAA's (Incandescent) which were actually already quite white compared to the OEMS. The LED's are whiter & crisper still I think. I'm not going to say which is which, you decide!
 

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Looks good thanks for researching, testing and posting the results for the rest of us. I am going to order a set of the LED 6 bulbs.
 
D'Ecosse said:
The LED's are whiter & crisper still I think. I'm not going to say which is which, you decide!

They both look the same to me... j/k :) Huge difference. Actually those WLED6 bulbs are brighter than my PIAAs LED wedge bulbs.

Time to take an inventory of all the bulbs on my cars and make another bulk order to pick some of these up...
 
I just took some pix of the festoon bulbs in the door, domelight, and footwell. I'm ordering some more W6LED bulbs to do the license plate lights and replace the PIAAs 4 LED bulbs I have.

With the festoon bulbs, you want to order the 3022-4 LED Festoon bulb $ 1.59 (each). They have to be aimed. It's real easy, you can just spin the bulb in its receptacle. Be careful taking out the old bulbs as they can be very hot.

Why all the LEDs? They are brighter, whiter, much more efficient and run cooler. For example, each license plate bulb is 8 watts or 667 milliamps at 12v. The W6 bulb has a max power consumption of 26 milliamps. The festoon bulbs at 10 watts consume about 833 ma while the LED version burns 32 ma. That's 26 times less power. It puts less drain on the battery when you got the doors/trunk open.

This is a pic of the bulb in the door. It's a very intense white:

9919festoon-1.JPG


This is a pic of the festoon bulb casting the spot lamp effect in the driver footwell. Each bulb has 4 LEDs in opposite directions which is why you get this effect. I like it, looks even better in person.

9919festoon-2.JPG


This is the bulb in the domelight on a targa. Good amount of usable light.

9919festoon-3.JPG
 
I did exactly like Malibu Rapper, couldn't be happier. These beat the existing Piaa ones hands down, light output is brighter, whiter, cooler (pun intended) and best of all, they are cheaper and last way longer. :wink:
 
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I too purchased the LED replacements for '92. I just put the dome/doors and trunk in this morning and they look sweet. :smile:
I also have replacements for Front Parking Lights/Tail-lights.
Can anyone show me the thread on how to remove/replace Front Parking Lights/Tail-lights
 
I have been looking at that website for quite a long time but was hesitant b/c I wasn't sure of which bulbs would fit. Can someone who has done all the lights possible please post the bulb numbers so we can get a full condensed list to make it easier on potential bulb buyers. Greatly appreciate it! Thanks!
 
Go to the front page of the site, scroll down until you see 'Click here to identify the bulbs in your vehicle', you'll find the list of all of the bulbs of the NSX and take it from there. Hope this helps. :wink:
 
hybridnsx said:
Can someone who has done all the lights possible please post the bulb numbers so we can get a full condensed list to make it easier on potential bulb buyers. Greatly appreciate it! Thanks!

What bulbs did you want to replace? I would just opt for replacing the parking, interior, trunk, and license plate bulbs. Maybe the sidemarkers. Due to the directional nature of the LED bulbs, you should probably avoid doing anything in the tail lights because they are angled.

Parking lamps: 2 x WLED6 (white) $2.34 each
Festoon interior: 5 x 3022-4 (white) $3.64 each
License plate: 2 x WLED-W4 (white) $2.34 each

With the front and rear sidemarkers, this is where you have more options with the colors. They recommend using the same color bulb as the lens. Conventional wisdom tells you that white would also work but I haven't tried it. I'll try it this weekend and will take pictures. At any rate, these are 168 wedge bulbs.

You can find the bulb information for our cars on Sylvania's website. Here is the LINK
 
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Has anyone used the 1156-W24 LED lights for the Front/Rear Turn Signals? I was wondering how they might show up. I was wondering if they were bright enough/visible enough and "sharp" enough. . .
 
Malibu Rapper said:
.... With the front and rear sidemarkers, this is where you have more options with the colors. They recommend using the same color bulb as the lens. Conventional wisdom tells you that white would also work but I haven't tried it. I'll try it this weekend and will take pictures.
Malibu - my understanding is you cannot use white leds behind a colour filter - the way the white light is produced in an LED is not the same as with an incandescent, so a lot of the light will not be able to get through the colour filter. I believe the light is predominantly of the blue spectrum in a white led.
When using LED's you should select the correct colour LED for the filter - the exception of course is a clear lens where it does not filter any of the spectrum i.e. if you had clear corner side-markers you can use a red or yellow led & it will illuminate in that final colour, even with clear lens.

from led FAQ's
21. How Do Those White LEDs Work?
Considering that LEDs emit their energy in a narrow spectral band, it may seem surprising that White LEDs are available. There are presently 2 kinds of LEDs that have a visual white appearance. The earlier type actually consists of red, green, and blue LED chips packaged closely together. This kind of array can produce many colors, but with the appropriate currents in each chip, the combination appears white.

A newer kind of white LED consists of a blue LED combined with special phosphors that give off a broadband glow when excited by blue light.



from TMILED
We are an expert in LED manufacturing since 1995. We do not like people getting sucked into buying white LEDs bulbs for use behind a Red or Amber lens. Those that sell the white bulbs know better than that!!!!! Simply, that is called fraud !!!!!!!! A white LED will not work behind a RED lens. Don't get sucked in!!!! It is time honest people speak out to let people you know before they make that purchase. To make white LED a blue CHIP is used then a phosphor cover is placed on top of it to change the blue wave length to a white color, but there is still blue in it and the red lens will filter out all the light. YOU MUST USE A RED LED FOR A RED LENS, DO NOT BUY WHITE!!!!!

These guys have nice products and great support - http://www.tmiled.com/
 
Hapa88 said:
Has anyone used the 1156-W24 LED lights for the Front/Rear Turn Signals? I was wondering how they might show up. I was wondering if they were bright enough/visible enough and "sharp" enough. . .

I was wondering if anyone had an answer to the above question that Hapa88 posed.

I would like to replace the parking and turn signal lights in the front of the car with LED's, since they last nearly forever, and it will be very difficult to replace burned out bulbs with my widebody (the slits in the bodywork for the lights are thinner, so you can't take out the light bar the conventional way. I think I have to take the entire bumper off). I would like to replace and forget them. I know Malibu Rapper recommended: Parking lamps: 2 x WLED6 (white) $2.34 each. Doesn't this go counter to what the Osram website recommends: Parking light 1157? I know that you have purchased this, and have proven this to be the correct part, but based on the websites, how did you determine this?

Using the same logic, doesn't the Osram website recommend the front turn signal lights to be 1157A, and if so, why did Hapa88 come up with the 1156-W24's instead of the 1157? Shouldn't it be the 1157-A12 or -A19 or -A24 or -A30 Amber bulb, per the yellow color as Ken and TMILED suggested above?

Thanks for your responses!

Confused :confused:
 
Hi Yawwn,

The parking lamp is definitely 168. The OSRAM site when searching on a 1995 NSX displays this as well. I had previously used PIAA wedge bulbs and knew this from some other thread.

It also indicates 3497 for front and rear turn signals. I can't find any 3497 bulbs so maybe their info isn't 100% accurate. What I do know is that the rear tail lamp has some of the lights on an angle. LEDs are very directional so you would need a funky LED bulb like on that TMILED site. See this post here.

I tried the white wedge bulbs in the orange front sidemarkers and they work. I think going with orange you can probably get better results per that information that D'Ecosse came up with. EDIT: I am attaching pix of the sidemarkers with LED white and with the stock incandescent. The sidemarkers are yellow now with the LED bulbs and really stood out this weekend. I like this color better than the orange.

9919sidemarker-inc.jpg

9919sidemarker-led.jpg


Whatever bulb you decide on using, before you buy the bulb you should make sure that it will fit. It may fit in the socket, but it may not fit into the tail lamp housing or the turn signal housing. Also keep in mind that these bulbs run at a very low current. Your turn signal flasher may go into hyper mode because it will think the bulb is burned out. Superbrightleds.com sells resistor kits to fix this.


Yawwn said:
know Malibu Rapper recommended: Parking lamps: 2 x WLED6 (white) $2.34 each. Doesn't this go counter to what the Osram website recommends: Parking light 1157? I know that you have purchased this, and have proven this to be the correct part, but based on the websites, how did you determine this?

Using the same logic, doesn't the Osram website recommend the front turn signal lights to be 1157A, and if so, why did Hapa88 come up with the 1156-W24's instead of the 1157? Shouldn't it be the 1157-A12 or -A19 or -A24 or -A30 Amber bulb, per the yellow color as Ken and TMILED suggested above?

Thanks for your responses!

Confused :confused:
 
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Malibu Rapper said:
..... Also keep in mind that these bulbs run at a very low current. Your turn signal flasher may go into hyper mode because it will think the bulb is burned out. Superbrightleds.com sells resistor kits to fix this.
Don't use the resistor kits - that is a real dinosaur fix (no dis' Malibu - lots of outfits promote this as the solution).
The reason that the flashers go at a fast rate is because they are designed to do that when a bulb fails - they detect the lower current draw & respond accordingly (I know we've all experienced that when a bulb goes out, right?) As Malibu pointed out the LEDs have a much lower current draw, so the detector circuit interprets that as a bad bulb. The resistor kits are a supplied resistor that you connect across the LED lamp to draw additional current to simulate that of an incandescent bulb. Problem is that is waste of power & they get hot!
But the easiest & best solution is to replace the flasher relay with one that does not have the low current detection & will flash at the correct rate.
Here's one from TMILED - http://usaled.com/store/index.php3?cat=283784&item=1153376 - TMI also has a beeping version if preferred.
You can also find units from other vendor that have variable flash rates if you want to customize the flash rate. (google for them)
 
Thank both of you for your quick replys!
I think that you are right to just purchase the parking lights. It seems like too much trouble to go with the turn signals. I'm sure they seldom burn out like the parking lights do and I don't want to worry about a quick blinking light or a different relay.

For some reason on the Osram, when you look up a 1991 NSX, it lists the 1157s for the parking and the turn signal lights. I neglected to look up any other year. Thanks for the heads-up.

I'll probably just purchase the WLED-6 as you recommended. BTW, not that the negligible difference in price is any factor, but you mentioned the cost to be $2.34 each, and you posted this about a month ago. It shows it to be $3.64 at superbrightleds.com. Am I looking at the wrong bulb, or possibly the wrong site. I just want to make sure it is the same one that you purchased, since you have proven it works on the NSX. The shipping costs almost as much as two bulbs :smile:

Thanks~
 
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