quick question that i wasnt sure of and i might have to amend my order. im getting my TSX next week, so i cant look at itl. but do the rear doors have the same T13 bulbs as the front or do the not. i know its a simple questions, but something id like to take care of if i need to order tw0 more of those for the rear doors, anyone, Bueler?

 

The rear doors do not have lights. It utilizes the 10mm Festoon bulb over the center of the seat.

 

thanks, exactly what i needed

 

Do any of the inside LED's require panel removal.....or can you just pop off the plastic lenses that cover the lights?

 

All the inside ones just pop off. Make sure to cover a flat head screwdriver with electrical tape or something else.

 

Okay cool thanks. I'm pretty sure I will be able to take care of this one myself

 

Anyone know how long bulbs usually take to ship from superbrightleds.com with standard shipping? I'm pretty excited to get them, but I have no idea how long it will be until I can get my hands on them. They shipped on 1/31/06, any idea when I'll get them?

 

Depends where you live, but I'm in
<--- Ohio and it took about 4 days.

 

I ordered mine on Monday of this week and I just received them yesterday (Thursday). Didn't take long at all

Going to install them prolly on Saturday.

 

I ordered on Monday and they came yesterday (Friday) while I was at work, not too bad. I'm going to install them this afternoon. I'll have pictures as soon as possible.

 

I'm (almost) all finished doing the LED replacement. All that's left is the turn signals (with load resistors) and tail lights. I was planning on replacing the tail lights and not the high mount brake light, but it turns out that the Sylvania website that I used to find out what size bulbs I needed was incorrect about the size. It says that you need 7443 bulbs for the taillights. I'm not sure if this applies for the 2004s or just 2005+ but for anyone else interested in doing this mod the correct bulb size for the tail lights (not brake lights, just tail lights) is a 168 bulb. This is the same size bulb as the parking lights and side markers.


I started the mod with little idea of what to expect and it turned out to be more challenging than I initially thought it would be. I started in the trunk to replace the brake lights, tail lights, and side markers.

Start by removing the plastic cover, it's very easy to do. Than remove the bulbs as you normally would and just replace them with the LED bulbs. It's very simple. Just make sure you don't grab the turn signal bulb when you're trying to replace the brake light. The side markers are a bit more challenging to replace because space is limited, but it's very doable.


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After I did both brake and side markers I moved on to the tail lights/reverse lights. This part is a bit more difficult. For this part you have to unscrew three screws in the trunk lining and pry the lining over two rubber pieces.


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Continued in next post...

 

After you've done that you are able to remove the lights and replace them with LEDs very easily, the same way the others were replaced. Here's where I ran into the first problem...like I said earlier, the website listed the bulb size wrong, so I still have regular bulbs for tail lights until I get 168 size LED bulbs from superbrightleds.com. I had 168 size LEDs for the side markers, but I didn't think they would be bright enough for the tail lights so I decided to order an LED bulb with more LEDs in it so the tail lights would be as bright as possible.

After I had all those LEDs put in, I replaced the trunk liner and secured it back in with the same screws. This is what it looked like:


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The tail light is a little bit brighter than the brake light as you can see from that shot, but the radially mounted LEDs in the bulb really help to create more light.



Since I had 2 extra bulbs that I was going to return, I decided to use one of them in the high mount brake light. This was extremely easy to do. In the trunk, go under where the high mount light is, twist it out, and replace with the LED.


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It's still very bright, almost just as bright as the regular high mount bulb. I'm still undecided as to whether I'll keep this one or not.



Next came the really tough part, the front parking lights. I started by trying to go in through the engine compartment, but that didn't work, I couldn't reach the bulb. So I went in through the wheel well.

For the driver's side, I turned the wheel all the way to the right to work, and on the passenger's side, I turned the wheel all the way to the left to work.


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Same on the other side, only turn the wheel all the way to the left.

There are several "screws" on the outer edge of the wheel well that have small slots in them so that they can be pried out using a flat head screwdriver.

A poor picture of one of them:

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Next, you have to pull the wheel well lining away from the bumper and the body and reach up into the engine compartment. It's a tight squeeze, but I have large hands, so your milage may vary.


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Continued in next post...

 

Another picture of the front marker replacement:


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And finally, the (almost) finished product:



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The pictures don't really do justice to how bright the LEDs are. They are not quite as bright as regular bulbs, but they are plenty bright enough to be safe. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to keep all of them. I'll update when I get my new tail light LED bulbs.

 

Since I can't edit any of my previous posts, I have to add this...

There is no clearance issue with any of the bulbs. They all fit perfectly inside the assembly they were put in.

If you have any questions about any of this or are interested in doing the mod yourself, PM me or post the questions here and I'll do my best to answer them.

I'm going to do the turn signals within the next few weeks and I'll do a how to on those as well if anyone is interested.

 

Nice job. I couldn't have done a better write-up myself. You'll really love them at night once you see how deep of a color they provide.

 

awesome great job!!! i just installed the ones in the front and rear dome light and in the doors too. I had an extra from the doors so i just put the one in for the trunk light too. Took about 5 min of total installation time......in the frickin SNOW! :P

 

Thinking about putting these "D-CELL" bulbs in. Under normal conditions, they're the Matrix LED bulbs others have used for their brake lights. But when you make a hard stop, they flash rapidly for a few seconds. Looks like Mercedes is using these in some of their vehicles.

What I'm trying to figure out is: 1) are they street legal in the U.S., and 2) do they look dumb or are they cool? Always a fine line between the two...

 

Looks like they're not street legal...yet. But Mercedes got an exemption from the NHTSA so they can put them in the new S-class that goes on sale in April.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11351634/

Who knows how long it'll take before the government changes the federal standards. But if the Mercedes ones get enough attention and other automakers start doing it, I'm sure that'll help.

(You might need to refresh your browser to view the animated pic below)

 

I think that looks retarded and the constant flashing would be so annoying

 

They only flash fast during an emergency stop -- when you slam on your brakes really hard. Otherwise they behave like normal LED bulbs.

 

Seems kinda pointless. You could just use your hazard lights then.

 

Not to sound like a smart ass but cant you buy this flasher instead so then you dont have to splice any wires..

 

I always thought the same thing...but it turns out that hazards don't help...

Specialists at Mercedes tested various warning light systems during their study. Brake lights which light up four times as quickly as the amber hazard warning flashers during emergency braking proved particularly effective in alerting following drivers to the danger of a rear-end collision. The Mercedes study also revealed that switching on the hazard warning system in a dangerous situation has no significant effect on the reaction times of other drivers.

 

OK guys... I posted this in another thread but I will post here too to just in case

I'm having a problem with the blinker blinking too fast. I bought 2, 3 OHM load resistors and think I installed them correctly (they just go inline, on either wire right?) That didn't work though. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

superbrightleds.com suggests the following: 6 Ohm, 50 Watt resistors can be connected across the turn signal bulbs to simulate the load of a regular filament bulb (2 Amp load).

So instead of buying 2 3Ohm, you need 4 6 Ohm, 1 per turn signal wire.

 

why splice wires when you can just put this in..

 

Good point, but I think he has already made the cuts.

 

cause he's already spliced with this LED tails

 

Thanks moda! I'll try that!

Edit: btw when are you coming down this way?, you better let me know when you do

 

then this looks like you need two rl650's from superbright leds and you need to splice one wire from the resistor to your cars positive turn signal wire and the other with the positive wire from the led retrofit's turn signal. the negitive wires do not need a resistor but that is when wiring leds by them selves but im sure its the same shit.

 

Sent you a PM. Tentative upon upper mgmt's approval of course.

 

Where'd you find that? Got a link?

 

You can get those from www.superbrightleds.com (more specifically, near the bottom of this page. I believe they're also available from http://autolumination.com, but I'm not sure of that as I can't find them on their site right now.

 

http://superbrightleds.com/tail-brake-turn.html just scroll down a little and you'll see it.

 

Sweet, I designed a 555-based circuit to do the same thing but that will save me a lot of time. Thanks.

 

Do you need to use the resistors when replacing the brake lightbulbs?

 

Nope. Just the turn signals.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

is it difficult to replace the licence plate lights to LEDs? if not...how?

 

No and it in this thread amongst others. Please search