Friday, November 23, 2018

More LED Madness - Final Result of Rear Lamps Plus

So as I indicated in my last post, I decided to complete the rear tail lamp LED experiment by ordering 2 more so as to have the complete 4 bulb set.  That, and I also wanted to experiment on a couple of other areas. So I went ahead and ordered a few more things...

A few days later the box arrived. Last time I forgot to take a photo, but these guys do a good job with box marketing. Check it out:
Very slick. About the size of a medium sized book. Super light though of course.
 On opening, it contains the usual receipt, advert, and warranty (but in a nice translucent plastic sleeve), plus a set of black cloth gloves - perhaps to protect your hands from burns as you remove the old bulbs? Or maybe to prevent the transfer of oil from your hands onto the new bulbs? (I thought this was an issue only with xenon bulbs?).  And then of course the bulbs themselves.
I swear Japanese product packaging never ceases to amaze me.
So 3 types of bulbs (T10, S25 (aka 1156), and the red double S25 (aka 1157), for which I will go into more detail later.

Of course I had to wait a few days until I got off work early, but then fitted to the GT-R as soon as I could. But first to review:
OEM incandescent bulb on the left, the Pika-Q LED 30lm/200 lm bulbs on the right
Unfortunately, the iPhone camera simply does not do the new bulbs justice, which to the naked eye, "pop" in brightness compared to the old ones.

Also - last time I had noticed that the license plate bulbs (which are aftermarket LEDs too) seemed a bit dim. Might as well see what happens when I replace with Pika-Q brand T10 leds, right?
So here is a close up of how it looked before.
And here is what one of the old T10 LEDs look like. I can't even figure out their specs (such as brightness), having bought them several years ago.  I do remember thinking that the lighting looked much WHITER than the yellowish OEM bulbs. But maybe 20 lumens?


When I searched on the Pika-Q site, I simply went ahead and tried to find the brightest T10 bulbs I could find. This model, at a claimed 100 lumens, seemed to be the best ones.




Here is how it looks. Pretty plain packaging for all that hype.



Anyway, what's important is to see the difference. So I went ahead and unscrewed the clear plastic covers to access the old bulbs, and put in one of the new ones to check out the difference.
Old bulb on left, Pika-Q on the right. WOW.
Ok so the new one is brighter, but how about when it's all back assembled?
So the new LED is so bright the old one appears to barely illuminate.
Anyway, despite the now real danger of the police being able to read my license plate from a kilometer away at night, I went ahead and replaced the left side with the new LED as well.


Pretty incredible! 
I then took the following 3 photos so you can see the difference between the old red bulbs and the new ones.

Two on the left are not LED
Left outside one still not LED
All 4 LEDs
What's interesting is how bright the license plate now is - remember, those bulbs are a claimed 100 lumens while the red ones are only 30 lumens at rest (200 when braking).

What do you guys think? License bulbs too bright?  Oh, and the other 2 bulbs I received? That's for my next post...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ummm... really can't tell, but I really love how the oem bulb lights up slowly with fading effect. But I guess LEDs is better overall.
But!! For the license plates, please don't do it!! It's like some kind of billboard lighting up at night. LMAO. Even oem LED ones on high end car's license plates are not really bright. I'd say stay with the old one. It really looks annoying. I should know, I almost took that path. It's like it's getting more attention than another car's brake lights at night. xD

Karl Donovan said...

Dearest Aki (oh great one from over there). Although I have already LED'ed my number plate with a 501 bulb. I also have started to walk the path of rear light LED's before reading your post. The amusingly named Pika-Q bulbs are not readily available on my small island, although I have selected some of these https://www.autobulbsdirect.co.uk/380-twenty20-cree-led-12v-p21/5w-canbus-bayonet-bulb.html admittedly with minimal research (sometimes I go where the mood takes me). A most excellent post.

Aki said...

Anon- yes a few months later I'm still not sure. But, since these days I rarely drive the car, I'll keep them on for now... I AM keeping the old ones, just in case.

Karl - LOL you crack me up! But always good to trade info. Do those silver cones work well to disburse the light well? Let me know!