notquitesane

I don't think I could solder those tiny tiny leds! Looking forward to seeing your progress with your LED headlights. I recently saw a review of someone putting Philips X-treme Ultinon H11 LED bulbs in a Ford Fiesta ST, the results were pretty good. The beam pattern was pretty close to the original stock bulbs, didn't look like there would be any more glare than with the stock bulbs. Expensive, but it's a big brand name. If I save up enough, I'll give it a shot.

left... right... lol aren't they the same? lol

I got it made and uploaded. So you need something long and skinny to fit in the hole on the right hand side of the licence plate bulb.

Sure, I'll do that in the morning right after getting back from the farmers market.

I totally deformed the spring clip removing one for the first time. I had to bend it back into roughly the same shape for it to fit tight. I think you just try to push over the spring clip with a screw driver. There should be a notch for it to fit on one side. What I did wrong was that I just started prying down and bent the spring clip the wrong way and bent it all out of shape. The other side went much more smoothly after ruining the first one. lol

yeah it seems there isn't a standard when it comes to vehicle wiring. I had to flip the wires for a set of brake lights that were 7443 CK. Seller told me my car is wired backwards. I soldered in my 1K ohm resistors the same way as you did for the tail lights. I hope your new turn signal lights work better! I like the ebay ones I bought. Nice and bright.

If you use an 1156 or short the two pins, then it will look like you have a European car with rear fog lights always on. As soon as you turn your headlights on, the inner tail lights will light up bright, like the outer lights with the brake depressed. This is why an 1157 is required, so it will light up dim and match the outer lights when you are not pressing on the brake. 1156 has either bright or off. 1157 has bright, dim or off. Now if you hacked into your wiring harness and connect the inner tail light wire to your center brake light wire, then you would have all 4 tail lights on when you hit the brakes, but the center ones wouldn't glow dim with the head lights turned on. Or if you added an additional contact below the 1157 bulb and connected that to the center brake light, then you'd have all 4 tail lights turn on dim with the head lights and bright when you hit the brakes.

The inners do not get brighter when you press the brakes. They only come on when you turn the head lights on.

Do you have any updates on this Okashira? If possible, could you post a comparison picture with the led bulb on one side and a halogen bulb on the other pointed at a flat wall? The initial picture I saw you post looked promising.

I don't believe household LED bulbs out there are recommended to be installed in fully enclosed light fixtures, with the exception of a unique liquid cooled LED bulb. Heat will kill any bulb rather quickly. LEDs wouldn't fit in my bathroom light fixture as it was too small. I couldn't keep CFL's in in there longer than a year before failing. Switched to halogen 43W bulbs, again failed in a year. Back to using 40W incandescent. That said, all my other open table and floor lamps I have use Philips or CREE LED bulbs and have lasted years. I did buy cheap ebay bulbs for my front signal lights as nothing else I've purchased has worked well. What could work well would cost well over $100 and I refuse to pay that much. The cheap ebay bulbs I had in my Fusion lasted 5 years without failing (as did the expensive ones) so I'm hopeful the ones I put in the C-MAX will last just as long. Only time will tell!

When I had HID's in my Fusion, I used a 4700 uF capacitor per side to smooth out the PWM stuff. Could work with the LEDs I think.

They might. Does your 2013 have that extra bit covering the rear turn signal and reverse bulbs? The bulbs you listed will stick out 22mm more than the stock bulb.

For me, instant on/off and no amber showing when off was the whole reason for switching to LED!

Yeah it's in parallel. I was lucky with my old 2008 Fusion and only needed 1 resistor when I replaced both front and back bulbs. I was able to do that with the C-MAX too until I started using the ebay bulbs. It would be fine if the headlights are off, but with the headlights on it would hyperflash. I suppose you could measure the load your bulbs draw, compare that to what an incandescent draws and calculate what resistor you'd need to make up the difference.

Looks good. Make sure you order 5 194 red bulbs for the center brake light. Also the cargo lights on the inside of the hatch are 194's as well, 2 of those. I needed a 6 ohm 50W resistor per turn signal bulb that you switch to LED. I've had some hyperflashing since I installed the ebay bulbs up front so I'll have to install a 2nd set of resistors. I'm going to install both in the back where it is easy to attach to metal and stay away from the elements. I had to go shorter with the reverse lights and rear turn signals because there was a plastic piece limiting how long of a bulb I could use. The amber bulbs in the mirrors also only have enough room a slightly longer bulb. I also had bulbs flicker when the car was on. This was because of the canbus bulb detection stuff the car uses. A low voltage is applied when you turn the car on to detect if a bulb is out or not, and that is enough to cause some bulbs to faintly glow and flicker. You can order canbus ready bulbs or put a 1K ohm 1/2 W resistor in parallel.

My manual was incorrect when it listed the bulbs. I purchased 3157 for the tail lights before I took delivery of the car. I didn't know they were the incorrect type. Click here for a list of automotive bulbs. The outer brake / tail is attached to the rear fender of the car. The housing has the brake light in the bottom and the turn signal on top. The bulb is a 7443 CK. It's similar to a 3157, and a 3157 should fit into the socket, but it won't snap into place and might fall out. Look for W21/5W on the list of automotive bulbs to see what a 7443 looks like. For a difference beteween standard and CK wiring, see this. The rear turn signal is a 7440, as it only has 1 filament. Looks the same as above but with 2 contacts on the bulb instead of 4. The inner tail light is attached to the tailgate of the car. The tail light is in the bottom and the reverse light is on top. The bulb is a BAY15d (or P21/5W or 1157). Look on that list of automotive bulbs for P21/5W or BAY15d on the list. The reverse light is a 921. You can see what that looks like on the list of automotive bulbs by looking for W16W. The front turn signal is a 3157. See P27/7W on the list of automotive bulbs for what it looks like. The rest of the bulbs look correct.

The outer tails are 7443 ck. The inner tails are 1157. The front turn signal is 3157. If you like cheap, you probably don't want to know much much I paid for all my bulbs. lol The cheapest ones I have are the reverse lights in the pictures above. The brake lights and rear turn signals are from Japan as they don't sell them here.

Here is where I bought those front turn signal bulbs. http://www.ebay.ca/itm/2X-3157-High-Power-Projector-2538-Chip-LED-Amber-Yellow-Turn-Signal-Light-Bulbs-/231610309701?hash=item35ed0cdc45 Only the rear brake lights are CK. The front turn signals are standard wiring.

Bulb update. So I changed a few bulbs in my car. I haven't had time to take pics of everything, but I will when the home reno's are closer to complete. 2 rooms have been painted, laminate laid down and baseboards attached all during weekends until 4pm due to condo board rules for construction noise bylaws. 2 rooms left for paint. Those AFSpec brake lights are deceiving in pictures. The red is a deep intense red, so it seems they are brighter than incandescent. When I am in reverse, the backup cam just shows 2 blobs of red in the middle of the screen. The camera doesn't have a chance of picking up much else because the red is so bright. Might be too bright. I pulled them out because the dim mode was too bright. Not enough difference in brightness when I hit the brakes. So to replace them, I ordered Philips X-treme Ultinon red LEDs. Thery were even more expensive than the amber turn signals as they don't sell them here and I had to get them from Japan. They are very similar to my rear turn signals. The red brake light is on the left, the amber signal light is on the right. The bulbs use 2 Rebel LEDs and the red bulbs are only rated at 75 lumen, but I can say that they are brighter than the Philips Vision LEDs. The Philips Vision LEDs have a dark vertical strip down the center of the lens, the Philips X-treme Ultinon bulbs do not. They fill the lens quite nicely. When my home reno's are closer to complete, i'll grab some comparison pics. I've searched for better front signal lights as all the previous sets were never brighter than stock. I had 5 year old ebay bulbs, Diode Dynamic XP80 bulbs, AF Lighting AFSpec 30W P/R hybrid bulbs. The AFSpec bulbs showed so much promise, but they were very dim as the colour is a very deep amber colour. I couldn't see any light reflecting on signs in front of me at night while the turn signal was on. So I bought these. I know they are cheap ebay bulbs, but so far they are brighter than anything I've had before. I can see light reflecting off of signs in front of me when I signal. My car wants to randomly hyperflash so I may have to install load resistors eventually. For comparison, here are what the AFSpec 30W P/R hybrid bulbs look like Not as much lens fill and dimmer overall. So I hope the new ebay bulbs hold up. And I hope I don't have to order any new bulbs.. my other half is going crazy with all these sets of LED bulbs lying around... lol

I'm not happy with my front amber LEDs. I have new ones coming but can't recommend any at the moment. The LEDs I purchased for the tail lights had one fail. It measures a dead short across all pins, so I'm back using the Philips Vision LEDs. I like them but they aren't brighter than incandescent. I did find out that if the lights briefly light up when you turn the ignition on, then immediately go out, it's because something is shorted. The C-MAX is smart enough to cut power to the bulbs that it detects a short on. When the dead, shorted bulb was installed, the left tail lights were out and the right ones were on. After I removed the dead bulb and cycled the ignition, both tail lights lit up. The usual cause of this is installing a standard bulb for the brake light. Our cars need a 7443 CK bulb for the brake light.

I don't have comparison pics yet. If I do take some, it will be with just an incandescent bulb hanging where the light housing usually is. But here is a pic of what it looks like.

Well I have played around with a lot of the lights in the car. I couldn't leave the lights in the cargo area untouched. I did replace the 194 bulbs with LEDs and it was brighter, however I wasn't happy with the way it looked. I don't like how Ford doesn't have a reflector behind the light. Half the light is wasted. Also, with the way the light is inserted behind the plastic lens, only half of the lens is lit up. Little things like that annoy me. So naturally I had to find a way to hack and modify things. Firstly I found small LED cob strips on ebay. I don't know much about them, and info from the seller was minimal, and the info that was provided was incorrect. I did get 10 for about $8, shipped. After I received them, my testing indicated there are 9 LEDs, most likely in 3 groups of 3. If I run them at 60mA, they make little heat and can be used as is. If I run them higher, a heatsink is needed. This project, I used 2 cob strips running at 150mA. I had a lot of spare aluminum blocks from work, so I used silver epoxy to glue up a bunch, and then used the same silver epoxy to glue the LED cob strips onto the aluminum blocks. Running the LEDs at 150mA for hours would result in the aluminum blocks to be warm to the touch. They lit up quite nicely. I then used Goop to glue some protoboard to the back. I mounted a 150mA constant current regulator from ON Semiconductor. I fashioned a wedge connector with some leftover protoboard. This will plug straight into the connector where the 194 bulb pushed into. I used Goop to also attach the whole unit to the plastic lens. I did cover all exposed connections with either epoxy or liquid electrical tape. The result is a brighter cargo area with lights that look like they are fully lit. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of them lit up, but they look aweseome.

I just took a picture of the brake lights, comparing to incandescent. It seems the AFspec 30W LEDs are dimmer than the incandescent, just like the Philips Vision LEDs. They fill the housing a lot better than the Philips, which had a dark line running down the center of the reflector. It looks like it is a deeper red compared to the Philips I am happy with them. Now... if I can just convince some co-workers to buy my spare LEDs! And yes... I spelled Incandescent wrong! lol

I just received my new brake lights. I got a pair of AF Spec 30W Projector/Reflector hybrid 7443CK bulbs in red. They are brighter than the Philips Vision LEDs, fill the housing more evenly and are a deeper red colour. The Philips have a tinge of orange to it when you compare side by side. I don't have output shots yet, just a picture of what the bulbs look like. They are really bright. I got them at AF Lighting http://af-lighting.net and used a discount code of IL4SFTW that will get you 40% off the 30W bulbs until August. With the discount code, they are close in price to the Philips LEDs. Time will tell if they will last, but at least they look fantastic. Here's what they look like. I also have a set of their 30W 3157 Amber bulbs out front. I am going to play around with them, might try to order different 3157 sockets to see if I can move them out a bit more in the housing. They are brighter than what I had before, because of the back firing LEDs. I just don't think they are in the right spot to fill the housing. If they were just a LITTLE bit longer, it would be perfect. Here's a youtube video of the ambers in action. They aren't as bright during the day in direct sunlight but I am happy with their performance. https://youtu.be/uBFU-QhF-8M

Well I finally got my new reverse lights. The LED chips on them are 2835 (really bright) and there are 15 of them. It's eBay, so they overstate the specs. It claims 15 1W led chips and 800 lumens (which I doubt). At 14.5V, they consume 200mA. That works out to about 3W of total power, so I doubt they are running them full power, or they are the less powerful versions of the 2835 led chips. They fill the entire reverse reflector and you can see them from the side of the car. The old Philips X-treme Vision ones I had before only illuminate the center of the reflector and you cannot see any light when you are at the side of the car. I got the new ones from a seller on eBay located in the states. Cost about $20 for 4 of them. Edit: I checked the Philips X-treme Vision bulbs. They draw 200-225mA at 14.5V. Here is what the LEDs look like. Here is what the old X-treme Vision 921 look like in the reverse light housing. Here is what the new LEDs look like in the reverse light housing. I haven't used them at night yet, so I don't know if they put more light on the ground. But at least they are visually brighter.