I put a set of 360 degree LED bulbs in my backup light socket tonight, although they look cool they do not emit very much light. Now I realize LEDs shine different the halogen or regular bulbs, but is there any LEDs that do work well for backup lights?

 

Cheap chinese ones or quality led's? It'll make a difference.

 

Actually it wont. LEDs don't have near the luminous output of incandescent. Mix that in with optics that were meant for a spherical bulb and not a rectangular base with miniature light sources, and you have a poor light output. You can use many low-power LEDs and custom retrofit or a single, high-power LED with a retrofit and get fantastic results. But as far as PnP bulbs go, no.

 

Reverse bulbs are the only incandecent bulbs I didn't swap to LEDs on my truck. What did you use? Do you have a link?

 

I used these in mine: http://www.v-leds.com/Exterior-LED-B...49832-1-2.html Probably about the same as the stock bulb...nothing spectacular though..rather dissapointed in them

 

BTW if you are set on changing the incandescent bulb to an LED option, VLEDs has a replacement that might give you the output you want.
They are $79.99 a pair.

They also have another option which might be as bright. It has 92 SMT LEDs on it. No high-power LEDs though. It's only $59.99 a pair.

If you do wan't to spend that much money on reverse bulbs, they have a sale going on right now. 20% off with coupon code SPOOKY20.

 

Hmm. I forgot to post links, and got beat to posting too. I'm slow tonight.

 

V-LEDs is overpriced stuff from China. I've talked to a sales rep, and he's even told me it only costs them a few dollars per unit. They make a killing on sales, thats why they have so many discounts all the time to lure you in. No matter how many LEDs you have on a PnP bulb, it will never be as bright as an incandescent.

 

haha 79.99 hahahahah

 

$80 for reverse bulbs...

I installed a pair of 35w driving lamps under my rear bumper for $40 and have 10x the output of those LED bulbs..

lights are right in front of the snowflaps

 

Thanks for the input guys, I'll just return them to stock I suppose. Are there any good incandesent bulbs out there for Backup lights?

 

You need bulbs with several LEDS in them to get bright light. I bought some that are very bright and put out more light than the stock bulbs. I think they have like 60 LEDs per bulb. Will post were to get them when I find the package.

 

For my reverse bulbs I actually have Silverstars, but I am using aux lights for backing up as well like ak cowboy. Only I swapped out the bulbs for Silverstars on them too. They are 65 Watts now.

 

Just a FYI - At SEMA this year (going on now at Vegas) there are a few folks with LED headlights!
They have more light output that conventional bulbs but not as much as HID. INTERESTING!

 

Ouch. $80 for pathetic 10lm backup lights. You could spend $30 and put around 2-300lm back there.

Very doubtful. Those low-power LEDs are only pushing 8-10lm max.

Yeah LED technology is on the rise. There are several production cars with 20W LED headlights. The current problem is heat management. LEDs get WAYY too hot compared to a more efficient HID unit. Give it another 5 years for LEDs to surpass HIDs.