led tail lights (canbus question)

Quiet_Spark

Euphoria1z wrote: »

ok, so just to clarify, I need to use a red LED (for my tail light) behind a red lense. I meant to say red led in my earlier post not bulb. I have normal tail light bulbs at the moment (the yellowish kind) but they don't last very long, so I thought id try the LED ones, and noticed they come in red or white. I'll order 2 red leds and see how long they last.

I expect that unless the other driver is directly behind them, their performance will be next to useless when compared to the incandescent lamps/light assemblies your vehicle manufacturer no doubt spent 10's of £1000's on during development as they simply cannot spread the same amount of light that your current incandescent unit can in all directions (which means it's harder to see you from the side).

Don't forget that LED's are also very difficult for the human eye to see if the sun is shining on them when they illuminate, so don't brake too hard if someone is behind you when the sun is in your face

There is also the possibility that you may be in breach of the C&U regs if you fit them, you'll have to make sure they are a straight swap according to the law before you can legally use them on a public highway.

If your current tail lights aren't lasting as long as you think they should, then I'd be looking at vibration around the lamp unit, dodgy wiring to the lamp unit, or you are buying cheap replacement lamps that are no good.

facade

I have found the stick type LED "bulbs" (with the square surface mount LEDs pointing sideways, not the plastic funnel shaped ones) to work quite well on motorcycles, when vibration tends to kill filaments
.
The sideways facing LEDs work with the reflector in the light unit similarly to the filaments.

Red LEDs will be brighter working through the red lamp glass.

The red glass is designed to block light that isn't red, so it makes sense to only produce light that will pass through.

enfield_freddy

I also use LED lightboards (from the link above) on all my bikes

patman99

A lot of the decent LED bulbs already have circuitry on them that fools the CAN-bus system into thinking that you have a normal bulb fitted.

enfield_freddy

patman99 wrote: »

A lot of the decent LED bulbs already have circuitry on them that fools the CAN-bus system into thinking that you have a normal bulb fitted.

from my experience , that is no more than a resistor to trick the circit into believing it is taking the full wattage

Quiet_Spark

patman99 wrote: »

A lot of the decent LED bulbs already have circuitry on them that fools the CAN-bus system into thinking that you have a normal bulb fitted.

As Freddy said, that generally worked on the initial CAN-Bus design back in the early noughties but modern day systems are much smarter and know the difference.