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(More customer reviews)Of all the 31mm festoon bulbs (most common size festoon on imports) this looked to be the best bet, but looks can be deceiving - the pictured bulbs were nowhere as well made as what was shipped. I had hoped these would be a good replacement for my LED conversion project but I may end up sending them back for several reasons
My LED conversion project:
My car has a 3 way switch for lighting. #1 is OFF #2 is a timer on door opening that is hard to distinguish from #3 which is ON forever. Therein lies the problem - with 8 festoon bulbs inside the car @ 7W each (incandescent) that's 56W of power drawing all night long if I push the switch too far up to turn on the lights and sometimes all day long since you dont notice the dome lights are all on in your SUV. Changing to LED 1W leds that are the same size bulb cuts the 56 watt load down to 8W. That's my goal at least.
When done, if I accidentally switch the lights to "ON" instead of "1 minute timer" and leave them that way I drain 1/7 the charge from the battery which makes the difference in starting the engine or getting a jump.
Now here's the bad news:
If you look closely at amazon's picture you'll see what looks to be a big LED with a heatsink (or some metal acting as a heatsink), which is important for the 1W LEDs today. Unfortunately what they shipped (I'll upload pictures) is a 2 piece plastic 12mm tube - 2mm larger than the festoon 10mm diameter spec. When inserted into the holder it snapped apart leaving me with a handfull of parts - I could use them but it's definitely not rugged like the amazon photo. I reassembled with the factory lens to try anyways and discovered another issue with LED conversion - factory lens/diffusers anticipate the long filament of a festoon bulb if thats what came with the car!
Take into consideration the difference in omitting the heatsink from the design - they can't run the 1W leds now which require a heatsink - this product is using some good quality 0.1 W leds which are BRIGHT for 0.1W (no heatsink), however not as bright as the 1W that you can get in the 31mm festoon package. For my suv's tailgate is up downlight where you sit, it already has a lens that the factory designed around the filament of a festoon light (20mm long approx) - change that to a point source of LED light and the factory LENS doesn't work as well as it did with the old bulbs in the car. In my specific case, I get less light with the LEDs because the factory lens isn't working as designed with the long filament down the bulb. This is probably why the 42 mm festoon bulbs try to put 3 leds in a row - they are emulating a strip of light, like the long filament of an incandescent bulb. 31mm is just a tad over an inch and doesn't have room for 3 led's and a heatsink (although my car has room for such a design if I made it myself!)Gotchas to keep your eyes out when buying led replacement lights:
#1 these are NOT the high power 1W LEDs - they are 0.1 W mounted on a pc board and a plastic two piece tube with light out one side only - so while a festoon bulb emits 360 degrees x 20mm, these emit about 30 degrees x 3mm - this can play games with the lens that covers them if it has its own diffuser. (mine has BOTH a lens right over the filament and a diffuser to catch stray light and bring it back)
#2 this particular product comes the closest to the original 31mm festoon bulb but is still too large to meet the 31mm spec (10mm glass tube with endcaps that make contact and a filament down the center) - it's body is 12 mm, which the clips on my car broke apart when I inserted it (it's just snapped together plastic) - plus it was 33mm long instead of 31 mm, which cracked the plastic tube. It also has no back light so lamp housings designed with a reflector behind the bulb won't benefit.
#3 Other 31mm festoon replacements that use a 2x3 grid of LEDs WONT work in many OEM applications simply because of their huge size. The leds are on a pc board that is not like the 10mm round glass tube that defines a normal festoon light. Most domelights these days don't have room for that big pc board. On my Honda, it's gotta be 10mm and round. This was the closest I could find.
So for now, 2 of my 8 bulbs got converted to led and I'm still looking for a good 194 wedge bulb that is bright. All the ones I've found so far do draw MUCH less power, but don't put out nearly as much usable light after the factory diffuser is replaced. It was not designed for a LED point source and doesn't work as well. I think the rule here is the more LEDs the better it looks like an incandescent!
Tomorrow these come out, go back to amazon in pieces due to the oversized package, and I continue my LED journey. Anyone with good 31mm festoon recommendations email please - my address is in my profile - thanks!. These may work for your car if your diffuser is clear and you have lots of room between the holders for the oversized package. They are well designed with a pc board that doesn't care about polarity and a smt 6 pin ic to drive the LED so I can't fault the engineer who made them. There are even cheaper designs on the market with just a resistor and a 50/50 chance of getting the polarity right - these work either way (an LED though only works with positve and negative right - so the designer had to get the voltage right and anticipate both insertion possibilities - that's why I'm still giving the product 4 stars because for some people it may still be the best bet.
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