How To Install The Excursion’S Siriusled Headlights?

Hey man. I’m an electronics engineer whom designed led lighting fixtures. You’re totally right. The problem about replacement led bulbs is that the original housing is not designed to dissipate heat so, the LEDs work harder. The heat is an enemy of LEDs. Other than that’s these cinese bulbs uses crappy LEDs, so they will color shift and loose loose luminous flux very rapidly with the time. Ok, it costs 1 dollar anyway. A decent led costs one dollar itself. Unfortunate there’s no miracle. All these retrofit LEDs suffer from the lack of dissipation by design. Be ready to replace it in a medium therm. Keep the good working. Peace brow.

I agree man! I bought a pack of 30 green led (194s) for my 1971 C/20 Chevrolet. About a yr later I started getting a flicker from random LEDs that I installed. I’ve added a few autometer gauges that offer led upgraded bulb replacements. They were way more expensive, about $15 each. Butt wow, they’ve lasted twice as long, no issues, no problem or flicker thus far

I’ve had similar problems. I replaced them with the newer style 4014/3014 bulbs. I think yours are 3535, these bulbs also have resistors built-in them to avoid hyper flashing or canbus errors. One has to bear in mind that these bulbs are evolving quite rapidly as opposed to the old style tungsten/halogen bulbs which were unchanged for almost a 100 years. Thank you for sharing your findings.

I’ve had these Sealight 194 bulbs installed in my 2005 Chevy Malibu Maxx for over a year now and I can safely say that they are a huge upgrade from the other 194 LEDs you’ve shown. One of my favorite differences – the Sealight bulbs don’t care about polarity! The crappier 194 LEDs need to be installed with the proper polarity otherwise they won’t light up – the extra circuitry that’s visible between the contacts takes care of the polarity preference that LEDs have on their own. Very, very useful feature when installing a large number of bulbs – nothing is worse than plugging them in, reinstalling your trim, then realizing you’ve got the polarity wrong! The Sealight LEDs are the closest things I’ve seen to direct replacement for 194 incandescents on the market thus far. Great summary article!

I replace my interior dome light with an LED a year or so ago, and, man, has it made a big difference! I work out of my car and often need to flip it on at night (while parked, of course). The brighter, whiter light helps a ton. It’s like the Sun shining in through a hole in the roof, good stuff. My next step is to replace the anemic reverse lights (or maybe wire up a light bar, instead).

1ROAD…They’re called contacts not electrodes AND in newer cars and trucks have ECU’s that monitor practically everything (including lighting) they will very often “throw a fault code” usually on your dashboard which if you choose the wrong bulb that isn’t designed properly you’ll get a fault code.Most better quality LED bulbs will state they won’t throw a fault code. Everything else was spot on. It’s like you said trial and error much of the time. Funny thing is LED’s have been around now for a few years and many Chinese manufactures (where almost 100% come from) haven’t figured out how to make them work properly and last yet. It’s best to find a forum for your particular car and find out what others recommend instead of trial and error.

1 Road – Appreciate the article! Have you by chance run across any “warm light” LED upgrade options, in the same “wafer” thin design seen in the article? Not really into the super bright blue-ish LED’s currently saturating the market, especially for interior lighting. Actually, someone really needs to come out with a interior LED map light upgrade that can cycle between “warm white” and “red Light”!! Rather surprised no one has done this yet…

I’ve always sourced my LEDs from “superbrightleds” been using their 194, 74 and a 578 bulb in my truck for over a year. the 194 and 74 are in the dash andare just as bright as the day I put them in. The only thing I’m not too happy with is the 194 bulbs do not work with the dimmer, but the 74 bulbs do.

What I often notice with LED bulbs is that the LED series resistors are chosen too small – so get the LED’s a higher current and burn through it sometime faster. I am a hobby electronics technician since I was 7 years old. But I’ve been a trained electronics technician for energy and building technology for 15 years. I’ve soldered together an LED bulb for the interior lighting of my car myself. I have deliberately calculated the series resistors for operation at 15V because the on-board voltage can quickly rise to around 14V with the engine running. This self-made replacement bulb has been in the car for almost 10 years without any breakdowns. On the board there are 16 LEDs, which are interconnected in 4 rows. Each series circuit also has its own series resistor. The power consumption is about 1W. The power loss on the resistors is so low (0,013W) that they heat up only slightly. But what you can do against destroyed bulbs: Connect a varistor directly parallel to the battery to prevent voltage spikes. Because I also had problems with often failed low-beam lights. Since I’ve installed the varistor, the bulbs last almost 2 years and longer. I also had a car hi-fi system built in with two 1F capacitors. The power amp was a Mac Audio ZX4500 Black Edition with 4x125W / 2x300W RMS at 4 ohms. The power amp was able to pull up to 900W from the electrical system. 3x 25A fuses in the power amp itself and a 80A ANL fuse on the battery. The alternator was designed for a load current up to 120A.

Hi, I have to cool down your enthusiasm. If you are using led bulbs with „canbus” description you are not saving any power consumption at all. Bulbs with „canbus” description are designed for cars with bulb malfunction monitoring system (not only can of course). It’s hot and cold system for checking if there is everything ok with wolfram wire inside standard bulb. One is monitoring bulb when its off (resistance of cold wolfram wire) second is monitoring working one (resistance or current of hot wolfram wire). So, to cheat the monitoring system producers of the “canbus” bulbs are using additional resistors and capacitors to achieve same current or same resistance as original wolfram bulb – this is the only way. Finally we have a led bulb with exactly the same power consumption as standard wolfram one…

Have you seen the “RGB 194” versions of these bulbs, quite a bit longer than the original but would fit in the door perfectly. As the name suggests these can have their colour changed by remote, and even better be made to flash (saves last mode after power off) good as a safety flasher when doors get opened.

From Amazon, Yorkim makes really nice LED bulbs. They even have Canbus type LED’s. Used for vehicles that sense the trucks bulbs for voltage changes. Such as the Ram currently. To tattle that the bulb is out, older LED’s the voltage is different and the truck would throw errors, message that it’s out, not so with the Canbus bulbs.

Great presentation. Problems I have are a much newer car like my 2012 Mini Cooper has a computer that does not like the LED’s. So, everytime I crank the Mini it will give me the warning sound and bulb light on the console. I can live with that. So far, 4 months later none of the bulbs have failed. At night I can light up the interior, change the ambient color and it is bright enough to have a disco party!! LOL!!

Thank you, the truth has been revealed. I did that same thing, endless searching for good reviews, higher than 95% feedback on ebay….it took nearly days to find. And, less than a year use already had one side marker break from heat. Question though, do they make LED headlight replacements that don’t have those stupid fans on the back of them? With high and low beams.

I changed to LEDs the first week I got my new car, back in 2011. And back then, there wasn’t so much of a variety of LED equivalents to chose from. So I did my own thing and made custom LED lights for all the interior housings, using LED tape. Cut to length pieces, stick ’em on a piece of cardboard, small wires for the connections, and 2019……all my interior lights still work perfect, no heating issues, and they turn on and off thousands of times whenever I open and close the doors. Just passed the 100.000 mile mark, and nothing to worry about. It’s an Idea I can safely recomend. Although, it requires a bit more involvement to it, and soldering and all…….but I think the end result is worth it. You have interiour lights that literally never burn. Problem solved!

Good info Jimmy. Google LEDs and you will understand why they actually fail. I think with your inquisitive mind that you will appreciate the read. The bad connections are not shorts. A short is like when your jumper cables touch and sparks fly an open is when you have no contact like a switch when you turn it off. As before keep up the good work. You are appreciated.

I got a full set for my 2003 4Runner off Amazon and three went out pretty quick so I bought another set so I would have spares of everything, fixed the three that had gone out and it’s been a little over 2 years now and no more have gone out. I replaced my bumpers with steel offroad bumpers and the front came with led indicator lights which caused hyperblink so I had to add a resistor to both blinkers and it’s all solved now. I like the LED bulbs better by far.

There are a few problems with your theory. 1) You seem to have declared your replacements superior without enough time to know if they’re long lasting. 2) The theory was heat is the problem and that is true but that’s about how brightly the bulbs are driven, how much current to make them brighter. Any can be modded with a higher value resistor to dim them and reduce brightness. 3) You wrote “coupled with being made fairly cheaply” when the black bulb you replaced was bound to cost more while the replacement that only used a PCB, had to cost less. It will have worse heat dissipation at the same power level so ultimately it has to either use more efficient LEDs (easily possible) or drive at lower current. Ultimately the problem is you’re trying to buy the cheapest things out there. Neither of them are worth more than 50 cents each if that. Well engineered LED bulbs using premium high efficiency LEDs cost more. Granted, for interior lights some will gamble without any safety risks like they might have with exterior headlights, tail lights, and turn signals. Do not skimp on those! Frankly it’s all a bit silly. You’re not tricking anyone into thinking a several years old vehicle is brand new by blinding them with the harsh cold light from LED bulbs. It just makes you look worse, literally it makes YOU look worse because in that cold light people look like gray skinned zombies. Appreciate how the human eye works. Glare from bluish light does not mean improved vision. It means your eyes are not and cannot adapt to it unless you wear yellow sunglasses which kind of defeats the purpose.

What about all the smaller backlighting bulbs that illuminate gauges, switches, and the radio? In my 06 Silverado, my headlights auto on more than I’d like due to probably a slightly faulty light sensor, but anyways the buttons on the radio get so so hot from those incandescent bulbs. Is there an led option for those?

I have interior and exterior LEDs in 2 cars. And have been for at least four years without problems. I live in New England. We have 2 very extreme seasons called Brutal cold and Swamp-Ass Hot. I bought mine on SuperBrightLED.com I’m not affiliated with them just a fact of where I got them. It was a toss up between them and CarID. Also keep in mind, you can’t just plug “replacement LED bulbs. Turn signals will hyper flash due to lower voltage and the car thinks the bulb is out. And God Sake! Please calibrate your headlights if you install them yourself. They need to be pitched lower or they will look like hi-beams even when on low. So if your brights are off and people keep flashing their lights at you, well there you go.

ive done all the interior lights to led and the number plate ones too .The cheap ebay ones sometimes do melt but if you buy from a respectable brand they last forever .Its one of the first mods i do when i get a car idk why in 2020 car manufacturers still insist on using old style globes .Esp for headlights etc

0:40 No, I could care less if my little accessory lights use 10W for 10 seconds, power is irrelevant when there’s a big generator (engine driven alternator) a few feet away. Plus, it is not “more modern” or “better looks”, these were things that poor people thought for a few years before it was better understood that very blue light sucks! It produces glare rather than useful light, with bad CRI, interferes more with your night vision, and despite the claims of most LED manufacturers, the true lumen output of most of these bulbs IS MUCH LOWER THAN STOCK BULBS FOR INTERIOR LIGHTS AND MARKER LIGHTS with one exception, the tiniest of bulbs you might find in a cigarette ash tray or glovebox, “maybe” certain tiny map lights but the worst thing for a map light is a low CRI bluish tint because maps are usually in color and who uses them anyway? Map light is not worth the effort. Even so, if you pick natural/neutral white instead of cold white, at least pick from a major manufacturer. They won’t be nearly as likely to lie about the brightness so they seem inferior on paper but the real brightness difference is only there if the generic is driven too hard and results in premature failure. Now about those 194 little black LED bulbs. I have dozens of them. There is no good use in a vehicle, but they are good in landscape lighting, Malibu, etc. I figured they would have 60Hz flicker but the persistence of the LED phosphor makes them look fine running straight off a standard 12VAC landscape transformer.

5:56 the socket and fixture are probably designed to keep water from the window from getting on the socket and the wiring. But as you can see, if you didn’t have those holes, you wouldn’t have any air flow ? I think you are right, heat is the problem. My headlights have a fan, and even with those I’m not really happy with the installation because it seems like water and contaminates can get on them. They are AuxBeam, a top brand. They may not make it through a really wet winter, and we have extremely hot summers here in Redding, CA.

After 15+ years of tinkering with such LED retrofits, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are are seldom worth the effort. Even assuming they don’t come DOA and last a reasonable amount of time before failing/flickering, there’s the issue of fixtures and lenses designed around conventional bulbs. Some of them just never work right with LEDs (especially headlight/position light applications). Interior and plate lights might work better (especially the festoon-type bulbs), and maybe rear position lights. But nothing beats purpose-designed integrated fixtures. Retrofits are almost always going to be compromise, more suitable for tinkerers rather than those who just want a “plug & forget” replacement. I have replaced more LED retrofit bulbs than actual incandescent bulbs!

The issue with the Heat might be due to using “canbus” leds. Not positive that the ones you show are this type, but the resistors on there look like it could be. Some cars will throw a warning when led bulbs are used for exterior lights because they use so much less power, and the car is calibrated to the power draw of incandescent bulbs. I’ve used very similar 194 bulbs that had these resistors that will supposedly fool the car – the problem is that they dissipate power as heat to fool the car. Cars that do this “bulb out” detection never do it for interior lights, so it would be wise to remove these resistors from the bulbs. It takes me all of 10-15 secs with a soldering iron to pop the resistor off, then then your led will be using a fraction of the power and stay WAY cooler.

To make the contact point better at the base you just pull out the metal a little bit. I get the 15 pack off Ebay for $1.19 with free shipping and they last at least a year + before they start to flicker. For the price you can’t beat em. The ones on my license plate been on there for 3 years and still going with no issue.

I haven’t converted my van yet but my home is completely LED’s, I like those “Bulbs” but it feels weird calling something flat a bulb maybe we should call them “Light chips” I think that’s the way I will go, P.S. for red lenses use red LED’s, for yellow lenses use yellow, etc. the color is more pure and brighter. tested myself on a control panel of a machine at work, one red led, one white led side by side with identical red lenses, big difference. another note I’m hooked on Hyper Yellow headlights they don’t look as bright but cut through snow and fog better.

I was at the salvage yard a few months ago looking for some parts for one of my older cars, i found a car and i pulled the instrument cluster out of it because i like having spares of it,i brought it home and didn’t think much of it and set it in the garage. About 2 weeks ago i was messing with it and pulled one of the little bulbs that illuminate the cluster and low and behold it was one of those little 5 light leds, 4 around and one on top so i started pulling all the little bulbs (16 total) and every time i would pull one out it was a led,i was like score!!! i started testing them and 1(one) out of 16 was good, ha ha ha ha, i thought these things were supposed to last forever but now looking at this article i realize that they dont. The clusters for my car normally came with little halogen bulbs and frankly those work a lot better than this stuff,i have found bulbs in the salvage that were 30 years old and still work just fine.

From my experience, I’d say the side of the LED bulb itself is the biggest factor, I’ve used LED bulbs ranging from the small 195’s, 3156/7’s, and headlights in my explorer, and mazda 6, the biggest issue with these bulbs is HEAT, the longest lasting bulbs in my own experience are 3156/7 bulbs, I’ve had the same pair of amber turn signals for over a year in my Mazda, when that got totaled I put them in my explorer, and when I sold that I gave them to my grandfather for a birthday gift, they still work flawlessly to this day. The 195’s afaik use the same SMD’s as the bigger 315x bulbs but they die ALOT faster because not only is the actual of the body of the bulb alot smaller so you have alot less thermal mass to disperse heat passively, but also the actual housing they are in are much much smaller then what a turn signal, brake light, etc would be in so what little passive that could happen is now reduced to 0, for most people I highly recommend the Auxtio brand that’s where I got my turn signals and brake lights and non have failed but those 195’s it’s better to just keep them incandescent not as bright but you don’t gotta replace them every 4-5 months when they inevitably fail from heat exhaustion.

I’ve been using various led bulbs in my car for several years with the same bad connection and heat degradation problems as you over time. I have also had some blueish leds dumped on me. I get led bulbs cheap from China mail order. Newer surface mount leds are much whiter and better. SMTs have better heat transfer, but that only helps with adequate heat sink attached. My last ones from a year ago looked promising with aluminum rings and strips for heat sinking, but were burned out within the year. The 7443 leds were COB strips that had no effective heat transfer to the sinks. I don’t know for sure yet if integral heat sink dissipation can be made adequate with good design. Different ones on order now with aluminum cores may hopefully be better.

Our Bulbs are all tested for several months on our own Cars before we sell them. There are around 25% good ones on sale. Most are ok to start with but the heat sink ones last much longer. Cheap Leds are readily available in China and some are good but it does take time and error to work out whats what. If you want reliability go for the ZX Heat Sinks but they do cost more. We have ZX on trial now on 3 Vehicles, one is a transit van sited on a West Coast Scottish Island. We are going back 18 months and they are still as good as new. Tested for us complimentary by Bakes Heating on one of the Islands so we could get all weather reports. They are still good to this day. The 50,000 hour full test has not yet been reached but we are otimistic.

The LEDs on my car are all Sylvania. I have them in my plate lights, marker lights, reverse lights, fog lights and tail lights. For the last two years that I’ve run LEDs in my car, I’ve only had a flickering issue in my passenger side fog light. I suspected I had a loose or wet electrical connection as the flickering has gone away. I’ve had no other problems other than that. I like the advantages that LEDs have. I never have to worry about a blown bulb and I like the extra measure of safety my LEDs give me at night, especially with the brake lights.

My 06 f250, was 10 yrs old before the first headlight went out, then the other one went out less than 6 months later. My 2012 Sonata, headlamp bulbs went out like every 8 months or so,since new, either side, plus, tail and parking and brake lights, same thing, gotta keep spares for all of them they go out so often . But the rest of the car is great.

I think it is the voltage that is the problem. Bulbs designes for 12v but during the winter in Norway my park LEDs died in a few month when car charger is at 14.7V. The new once you have look promising because it looks like they include two zener diodes (the black components) which will regulate the voltage to the LEDs and hence also the current and the heat in the LEDS.

Probably have a few comments, LED bulbs have thermal runaway issues, which is why they need current regulation. Resistors do this if the input voltage is regulated which automotive voltages is not. Automotive voltage ranges between 10-16 volts (extreme ratings) and more like 11-15 volts. What happens is the resistors are either underrated to dissipate the energy and burn out, or when alternator runs increases current to LED causing it to burn out. You need a electronic circuit to actively control current, like a field effect transistor or a buck type circuit. That takes up space and costs money which is why LED bulbs are garbage.

The only problem that I can see with these new 194 LED bulbs is that they only have diodes on the two flat sides and not on the end. I have a Chevy 1-Ton 4×4 Dually that uses 194 bulbs all over it as marker lights and clearance lights on the cab and tailgate. The light actually needs to come out the end of the bulb to work in these applications, so that style of an LED bulb won’t work. Too bad, I was really liking them.

I have never investigated LED bulbs but assumed it was simple and reliable. I see otherwise. I love LED flashlights but I see things like LED optional headlights are very expensive. I never thought of replacing simple 12 -volt bulbs in the car but I might check it out now as cars tend to be dimly lit.

I just found this article. Well done, thanks! I encountered this same problem. I expected the LED bulbs to “last forever” and then discovered they failed far more often than the incandescent bulbs. A big disappointment there. I also recently discovered these same “circuit board” type flat-LED “bulbs.” I bought some and replaced the existing bulbs with these. So far, all is good. But, this is only recently been done. You have had 4 years since this article. Have you found these new-style LEDs to have a long lifespan? Thanks, again!

I’ve bought some led bulbs that are the same shape as the standard 194 bulb and look good in my interior. Don’t know about lifespan as they’ve not been in long, but a previous owner had fitted led bulbs as side lights on my 2004 Mazda 6 and they were such a tight fit when one failed it ended up inside the headlight as it wouldn’t come out!!

SiriusLED Extremely Bright 3030 Chipset LED from Amazon. They have lasted since 2017 on both the Camry and Nissan truck no issues at all. About $14 a set per car. They are like the ones you are showing, very solid and no moving parts. I do hear from people who say that those LEDs from many source tend to be directional. That is if you put it in and doesn’t work flip it around and it will work. Personally never had to do that.

Hi, Today I replaced a light bulb (5w halogen) located near the pedals, and before I changed it, it used to work few seconds after I open/close doors. Today I replaced it with a beautiful Led T10. It works but now is still on even if I am driving. I like it but.. Is there any problem? Do you recommend me going back to halogen in order to avoid other issues? Thank you in advance!

All of my map light have been replaced with a panel style led meant for an RV they have an aluminum backing that dissipates heat really well. I did have to modify the housing quite a bit. The reflectors removes entirely and the panels stuck in the the housing with VHB tape. I did have to install a dimmer on them that’s controlled via RF. This is in a 2011 Kia Optima

My suspicions about failing LEDs were the same as yours, HEAT. In my latest car I switched to Sylvania and Philips LEDs. So far they have been great however I think they aren’t as bright as the cheapy chinese ones you can get off ebay/amazon. The other big CON is the price they cost 5-10x more, but are way better designed. BTW the LEDs you installed are CANBUS bulbs, it’s written on the pcb, they have resistors built in to trick the Canbus circuit with the proper resistance as incandescent bulbs. I’d rather not use canbus bulbs where they’re not needed but hey if they work for you then great.

LED on a flat panel – I would think they dissipate heat better. However they often don’t fit directly into the bulb socket. Instead there is an adapter that fits into the bulb socket, and is wired to the flat panel. Personally I perfer to find ways to crimp or solder the wires into the lighting fixture. Better electrical conduction, takes up less space. You can buy the panel acc to what part number the leds are, and how many there are, and what the dimensions are. You use double sided tape to stick them somewhere on the inside of the fixture. In a dome light, all the LEDs face DOWN where the light is more useful.