Complete led conversion
 

Long time no post. Wanna upgrade all my bulbs with leds. First ill start with the interior, reverse and license plate lights.

Im terribly frustrated by what im finding. First, do these trucks have can-bus for the lights? Second, whe replacing the dome light, can i use any 42mm bulb? Next, what style 194 is best for the map light and license plate lights? I seen some with 1, 5, 9, etc leds per bulbs. Also what size are the sun visor lights?

Read all the different f150 forums till i got a headache and most what i read wasnt very useful.

Im not to sure who or where to get em from either. Was on superbrightleds, vleds, f150leds and ebay. Superbrightleds are cheaper but vled has a nice dome light bulb with leds all around. Im ot sure what directio to go at the moment, any help would be appreciated.

Got my lights from O'reilley Auto parts...I have changed the dome, map and license lights...I just do them as I can afford them...

The license are Sylvania's. The maps are the Pilot brand...the dome, my son ordered off the interweb, and I got the Pilots to match it...I am happy with what I have so far...

For exterior (don't do headlights), you'll want to change your flasher unit. The Sylvania Zevo 3157 red and Amber are great for signals/brakes.

I use the Sylvania Zevo 194 as tag lights and jdm astar 194 Amber for side markers.

TBL LEDs are all from superbrightleds.

I have my interior and instrument cluster done as well, I'll have to dig up some info on what I used.

I have done every bulb except headlights and went through multiple different LEDs just trying to find the right ones. I finally have.

It's not always about how many led chips the bulbs have, but how powerful they are and which direction they emit the light. Tag lights do not matter as long as they fit. The brighter the better. Sylvania Zevo is great for that application.

I bought all mine on eBay. Mostly 10x packs. Those cheap ones from Hong Kong, the more ledsthe better.
I think the 194 is also called t10 among others.

For the license plate you need to get the flat ones. The other ones get the biggest one you can. If you do blinkers, mine does the hyper blink FYI.

I don't have visor lights but double check bulb and get flat style to be safe.

The main dome light work best with flat circuit board style with the plug.

I only buy SMD style. The flat square diodes. If comparing bulbs, go with the higher watt draw if possible. You might want to splurge on the back up lights but mine are very bright. I wanna say 48 led. A single led can be brighter. I think I spent 15$ total shipped and have many left over. I think those dome lights have the double sided bulb socket, get the ones with the board and LEDs just on one side.

Don't buy the cheap stuff from China.

The more LEDs the better is not always the case. One 5730 led chip is about 50 lumen. One 3528 led chip is only 5 lumen. You really need to kind of dive in and really learn before spending anything. It seems easy, but there are so many variables.

For tags, they don't need to be flat. They just need to fit. After all, the incandescent bulb that's made to fit in there isn't flat. The 194 Sylvania Zevo led is probably one of the best for the tag light application. About $12 per bulb.

As I posted earlier, you'd want to change out your flasher unit to prevent hyper flash. It's plug n play, right under the dash and easy and cheap.

Lastly, I'll say this again, do not waste your money and buy the junk LEDs from China. If you want something decent that'll last and is actually bright, you'll probably spend around $20+ per bulb.

Check theretrofitsource. Sylvania Zevo and the new Phillips LEDs are great. For a little more, check out Morimoto too.

Cool info. I dont do china trash. They sell em in a 10 pack cuz they sre junk. When i get on my reap computer and off the tablet ill post some ljnks to what i was considering for yinz to check out.

Ive tried a lot of stuff out there. I'll gladly check your links and give you an honest opinion.

Here are a couple of examples:

On the left is a Sylvania 3157R Zevo Led that uses different led chips for the running light and the directional. There's a noticeable different when it's flashing. On the right, there's a cheap Chinese junk led that uses a cheap resistor for the high and low light output. You can see there's barely any difference between the running light and the directional. Note: the cargo lights do not actually flicker when dimming, that happens only when brining filmed.


Below, I have a standard Amber sylvania incandescent on the left, with a Sylvania 3157 Zevo on the right. Light output is about the same. Which is good, because considering how LEDs emit light compaired to an incandescent, the led output usually ends up being less when you go with the cheap stuff.

So the zevo amber isnt much brighter? Hows the output on the zevo led (brightness)?

The red ones definitely penetrate a lot more than stock.

Good, if i end up doing harley style tails then it wont be as bad. I need to look into some reverse lights now. Im headed to do some errands tommorow so ill pick some zevos up. I like being able to get replacements easily.

The 6000k 3157 Zevo made a great reverse light. I'm using them currently.

I used all JDMastar from Amazon, been on the truck for over a year(all interior lights and some exterior) with zero issues. Also did cargo lights and reverse lights.

You have good luck! I've tried a couple various sets of lights from jdm astar and they had nothing but issues. Even their newest and supposedly best 3030 serious would flicker and sometimes not even come on.

Here's an example of one of their lights I tried: