Has anyone successfully replaced tail lights and marker lights with the new LED lights? We talk about how inefficient the early alternators are, I wondered if replacing all the bulbs with LED (I understand they are more efficient) bulbs would help that issue.

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RickN
White 88GT 5spd
White 85GT Auto

Would also look pretty cool, anyone know how to do it or done it?

Try here: http://www.superbrightleds.com/1157.htm

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A coward dies a thousand deaths..................A soldier dies but once.

Red 86 SE
Yellow 87 GT
Gold 86 SE (wrecked)
Red 84 2.5 Coupe

quote Originally posted by Fierofreak00: Try here: http://www.superbrightleds.com/1157.htm

You know if the quality of these are good? I know if the LED's are cheaply made they won't last long.

Matt

quote Originally posted by fiero go fast: You know if the quality of these are good? I know if the LED's are cheaply made they won't last long. Matt

I have no Idea, I got this from someone else and have yet to buy from them. I can't speak of their quality.

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A coward dies a thousand deaths..................A soldier dies but once.

Red 86 SE
Yellow 87 GT
Gold 86 SE (wrecked)
Red 84 2.5 Coupe

i've used them in a dash.. worked great

I have the yellow wedge type in my front marker lights. Much brighter & they don't get hot. Going to get red for the rear & clears for the PONTIAC on rear. Harry

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87 GT Maroon & 88 Formula Red

This morning I was following a 2000-something Grand Am with the LED 1157 replacement units. They looked stupid. The LED setup was a very small circle since the LED's are pointed straight back, where the bulb lights up the entire lens area. The LED's do not use any of the reflective surfaces, and therefor make your taillights look like they are so dirty inside that the light can't shine through. One other thing. When the car was turning, the taillights were very, very dim, and will lok that way unless you are directly behind the vehicle. Looking at them even slightly off center, they do not show the light very well.

Don't spend a ton of money on these things until you've tried 1 or 2. They are expensive and peosonally I would not put them in my car. I feel it's a safety hazzard, unless you can find a set that are made better than the ones that I've seen in Autozone and on the net.

Mark

Thanks for the info! I saw that they sell LEDs with two different viewing angles. They say that the wider the viewing angle the dimmer the overall light will be.

Yea I've explored the possibilities with LEDs but from all I've found out its just not worth the trouble to build something actually impressive, and if its not all out impressive it looks stupid. Just one of those things I guess. What turned me off is you can't use your original lens or any lens with them or they barely shine thru. That means lining and filling much of the our lens area with a TON of them to make it work right. I'm not saying that can't be done and wouldn't be very impressive, but it would be very expensive and a lot of trouble, and anything less wouldn't look great at all IMO.

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quote Originally posted by Key Of David: Yea I've explored the possibilities with LEDs but from all I've found out its just not worth the trouble to build something actually impressive, and if its not all out impressive it looks stupid. Just one of those things I guess. What turned me off is you can't use your original lens or any lens with them or they barely shine thru. That means lining and filling much of the our lens area with a TON of them to make it work right. I'm not saying that can't be done and wouldn't be very impressive, but it would be very expensive and a lot of trouble, and anything less wouldn't look great at all IMO.

I was just looking at it from the standpoint of lowering the power needs but I wonder if after you put enough LEDs in there to look right if all those LEDs add up to a power consumption close to the original bulb?

I think you could fill the whole lens area with LEDs and still not draw the current all the lightbulbs are pulling. I could be wrong about that but I believe I'm right. They draw very little current. Also keep in mind if you were to do that though, that with all those LEDs one may be a dud and is bound to fail eventually, and that ruins the look of the whole set up IMO. I see it all the time in Cadillac break lights for some reason. Not trying to discourage you just letting you know what I've seen. If you were to do it right it would be an unbeatable look.

Well, it sounds like it would have to be a custom homemade setup, not as simple as buying a replacement bulb though!

The front side markers will not operate properly with many LED modules. That lamp requires power to be able to flow in both directions. This is because of how the front side marker is wired to flash when the turn signals are activated.

Notes about light color matching lenses are correct. Colored LEDs operate with very narrow bands of light. If the light doesn't match the lens you will have dim or no lights. Dim lighting is a car just begging to get wrecked.

The amber side marker on Fiero is often faded quite a bit toward clear. The red and front turn/park lenses tend to hold their color better.

There are more notes in my cave under lighting.

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The only thing George Orwell got wrong was the year...

The Ogre's Fiero Cave (It's also at the top of every forum page...)

Ive had mixed results... I used white led for the front side markers... front turn & park are yellow 1157 led.
replacing the 194 for the cigg lighter was the best idea.. got rid of that hot spot for your arm. I only have one led in red for the rear outer lights.. that gives a faux sequential effect. But with red lenses use red LEds. Replacing the license plate 194s are a waste...194 red for the rear side markers.. use at least a 6 red led ..the singles are too weak. Have a pair of 6 led in my third brake on the Grand Am...good for the heat they use to generate with the reg bulbs cooked the plastic cover in high traffic. Its your own taste.. and what works.. back up lights.. nah.. I use high outout ricer bulbs. Leds are getting better every month.. but to outfit the whole car is $$. And if you drive your car (non Fiero) in the snows of winter.. there will be no snow/ice melting of the light assemblies. So.... my 2 cents .and oh yeah Merry Christmas !
Red

auto zone sells Jam Straight's, i have a pair, there 4 LED's / bulb and are bright , but dont really give off much light unless yor looking directly at them

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Rich AIM: ONE FAST 2M8:
98 Black GTP 2 Dr
86se V6 FOR SALE $1,500
Gold 86se 355 SBC,
92 BMW 325i

quote Originally posted by Crow:

I really envy you GT guys....yall have so many taillight mod choices its not even funny. I love my notchy but have to admit there's only so many options for me as far as tailights or anything else for that matter for it to look "right".

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I've worked with the ultra bright leds recently (the kind you could use for headlights) and can say they are really do the job. But you have to heat sink them and they are only as good as the optics are. You may have noticed on production vehicle's the parabolic reflectors around each led. The highest powered leds to date emit from the perimeter faces rather then the top.

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yellow 88 GT, not stock

ive redone my tail lights with red led lights, this requires an led specific blinker control to accomodate the much lower voltage draws otehrwise the current doesnt quite trip thwe blinkers right lol... took me a while to figure out why one blinker never worked while the other blinked really fast... anyways, i removed the coloed sections from the tails and they are now just clear tails and since the led's arent red unless they are on, it makes the back end look pretty pimp during the day and night time... i will take some pics sometime today once i get them onto my new 85gt... its like 15* outside so ive gott bundle up first lol...

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85 Red GT 4spd
85 BlackSE 2m4 Auto
85 BlackSE 2M6 4spd
84 Red 4cyl 4spd

quote Originally posted by TheIdealSociety: ive redone my tail lights with red led lights, this requires an led specific blinker control to accomodate the much lower voltage draws otehrwise the current doesnt quite trip thwe blinkers right lol... took me a while to figure out why one blinker never worked while the other blinked really fast... anyways, i removed the coloed sections from the tails and they are now just clear tails and since the led's arent red unless they are on, it makes the back end look pretty pimp during the day and night time... i will take some pics sometime today once i get them onto my new 85gt... its like 15* outside so ive gott bundle up first lol...

Cool! Do post when you get some pics.

I have extensive knowledge of the LED. I have used them on BMW K1200LT motorcycles and other cars.

Things to remember when working with LED's, you can see them in a straight line but not to the sides.
The 1157 is a dual purpose LED with lower wattage and is not as omni-directional as a standard bulb
You will great light out the rear but not so much out the sides. That is the draw back on LED's.
Then you have to consider the spread pattern of the LED. The wider the dimmer.
You will also have to use a limiting resistor in series to make them work properly on any car.
Things to look out for are the following:
Fast blinking (maybe a good thing for us)
No blinking

The resistor will heat up very fast and it will be housed in plastic in the taillights. You would have to mount the resistor somewhere else to dissapate the heat.

We have tried this on many a car and found that using the standard bulbs is the best
it is cheaper, and works on the design the car was created for. Changing the design of the taillights would look better if we could do something different to the notch back design!

Has anyone tried the LED 194 bulbs in the dash? It uses the same 194 as the side markers, but a bright light without the heat might be a good thing in the instrument cluster. Not sure how the ligth would work since it's directional, though.

I have used LEDs in a couple of Fiero applications - first, when I built my "clear lens" taillights, I initially used 1157 LEDs (really expensive at the time), and they worked great at night. But during the day, they were not nearly bright enough to get noticed as you really want them to when you stand on the brakes... the real problem was as others have mentioned - they are too focused and tend to project light out instead of all around like a regular bulb. In the end I switched them to standard colored-glass bulbs which improved daytime visibility a tremendous amount.

Here's a couple of links to that project: Work in Progress and Finally Finished

In that same project, I also removed the red "filler" panel in the PONTIAC and put in a diffuser and some Green-Glass 194 bulbs. Even though they were colored-glass (superior to coated glass), they were still very pale in color and didn't last too long (maybe 2 or 3 seasons). I just recently replaced the 194s there with Green 6-LED sets I picked up off ebay - the green is now rich and beautiful (and these types of mini-bulbs are designed to be non-directional, so the illuminate qutie evenly and brightly (even in daylight).

So my recommendation? Stick with regular bulbs when it comes to stuff like 1157s... but go ahead and swap out the 194s - they're extremely bright!

One more thing... in order to use 1157-style LEDs, you wouldn't necessarily have to mess with inline resistors to get the flasher to operate properly - just pick up a newer electronic flasher unit to replace your original thermal unit (they're about $10-15 at most parts stores). Oh yeah - and I'm now working on a newer setup (similar in design to Crow's) and will hopefully be dropping the "clear lens" concept soon!

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