changing normal van rear lamp bulbs to led?

M

martin west dorset

Joined
Jul 5, 2022
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Location
Bridport, Dorset, UK
Funster No
89,700
MH
Rapido 992MH
Exp
30 years
hoping that 1 of you experts can advise is it ok to change the rear van light bulbs on a 2007 Hymer 664 on fiat ducato 3 litre base to LED bulbs with out upsetting anything on the vehicle electrics.
 
I fitted Philips LED stop/tails and had to fit the resistors, but stopped at fitting LED's to the indicators as it required fitting 6 resistors and it is a pain trying to fit the resistors in the wing mirror and insulate them from anything that might melt as the resistor can get very hot.
I when for LED rears as I like having that extra fraction of a second you get with the stop lights coming on.
 
The Philps Led stop/rears I fitted are certainly brighter from directly behind and the stop lights come on faster as there is not a bit of resistance wire that needs time to heat up until it glows white.
As for the dubious amount of light lost from viewing from an angle, to be honest I'm only interested in the guy bearing down directly behind me seeing my brake light at the earliest instance.
 
I assume you've got a high level brake light that's LED already? So you've already got a fast reacting brake light.

Power saving from brake lights and indicators will be almost nothing. They might be bright, but they're only on a small fraction of the time. And a tail lights are only ~10w total, which is normally only on when then engine is running. Not worth worrying about.

On my old van, I did change the side lights to LEDs. It made them much brighter and whiter, so the van looked less dated.
 
I have changed all my outside lights except direction indicators and headlights for LED. My hymer is 2 years newer than yours and doesn't have any bulb warnings. The LEDs i used are brighter than the bulbs from any angle, they have leds on the ends and all round the circumference. Swapping direction indicators would either require ballast resistors or a variable rate flasher relay. I decided it wasn't worth the bother.
 
EuroTrotters said:
Lower power drain.
Click to expand...
Only if they are just LED. If you have a CANbus, and need to fit resistors to keep the CANbus working, it doesn't save power. The whole idea is to use the same power so the CANbus can't tell it's an LED bulb. The resistor just wastes the extra power.
 
Dose it make any difrance to power drane when engine is running I would not think so as altanator charges the system
Bill
 
The led lights if used without a resistor as mine are uses less power, though I doubt if it would be measurable.
Practically all modern cars have led lights so there must be some advantages.
The 16 marker lights would use 80watts if filament bulbs, around 7A, where the led ones use a tenth of this.

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Modern vehicles monitor the actual illumination of LED lamps. Fitting ballast resistors to LED replacement indicator bulbs would make the arrangement non compliant. (I hessitate to use the word illegal) If the bulb fails you will never know unless you walk around the vehicle and inspect them in use.
 
On my 2009 motorhome the only way to tell if a bulb has failed is to go and look. My replacing the filament bulbs with led has not changed this.
 
Clive Mott said:
Modern vehicles monitor the actual illumination of LED lamps. Fitting ballast resistors to LED replacement indicator bulbs would make the arrangement non compliant. (I hessitate to use the word illegal) If the bulb fails you will never know unless you walk around the vehicle and inspect them in use.
Click to expand...
LEDs are a gamechanger. Filament lamps have a definite lifetime, as the filament oxidises and evaporates. They are especially vulnerable to vibration. They are designed to be replaced at regular intervals. It's a good idea to monitor such things closely so that these frequent defects are detected as early as possible. LEDs have a design life more comparable to things like rubber bushes and brake cylinders, which may possibly need replacing after many years. They don't really need the constant close monitoring, but regulations take along time to change.
 
autorouter said:
LEDs are a gamechanger. Filament lamps have a definite lifetime, as the filament oxidises and evaporates. They are especially vulnerable to vibration. They are designed to be replaced at regular intervals. It's a good idea to monitor such things closely so that these frequent defects are detected as early as possible. LEDs have a design life more comparable to things like rubber bushes and brake cylinders, which may possibly need replacing after many years. They don't really need the constant close monitoring, but regulations take along time to change.
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That's true if your vehicle was designed for LEDs from the beginning.

But if the light reflectors are designed for an incandescent filament, putting in an LED with a different spread of illumination might mean you're not being effectively seen from all the appropriate angles. Even if it's brighter from some directions, you might be significantly less illuminated from others.

Also, if your van checks for blown bulbs and was never expecting LEDs, you end up with resistors that nullify much of the energy saving, which also adds new failure points. I've had just as many after market LEDs fail as I've had blown bulbs.
 
autorouter said:
LEDs are a gamechanger. Filament lamps have a definite lifetime, as the filament oxidises and evaporates. They are especially vulnerable to vibration. They are designed to be replaced at regular intervals. It's a good idea to monitor such things closely so that these frequent defects are detected as early as possible. LEDs have a design life more comparable to things like rubber bushes and brake cylinders, which may possibly need replacing after many years. They don't really need the constant close monitoring, but regulations take along time to change.
Click to expand...
What Guigsy said. See the video I posted a link to above. I have set it to play from the relevant section. It explains the problem accurately and show examples.

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An 07 Ducato won’t have CanBus lamp failure warning, so LEDs won’t trigger a ‘failure’. It came in the 2015 facelift, I think.. Earlier generation LED bulbs (DIPs) were slightly feeble and needed a tiny lens on each diode to increase its intensity. Unfortunately this had the effect of reducing the angle of effective light emitted. I bought some years ago and was very disappointed.
Current generation types (SMDs) are very different. The diodes, now much brighter, are mounted radially on a small cylinder, emitting light in all directions. The difference is remarkable. I first put them into my previous Hymer’s front DRLs. Originally ordinary 21w, they were now brilliant, pure white, looked great.
I then replaced the taillight bulbs. I found that, as the colour output of LEDs is very “white” ie no red in their spectrum, they made the red lenses look faded and washed out.
The answer was fit red bulbs. You can also get Amber. I’ve now got these in my lights on my bike rack too, and they work really well.
 
Reallyretired said:
On my 2009 motorhome the only way to tell if a bulb has failed is to go and look. My replacing the filament bulbs with led has not changed this.
Click to expand...
Something wrong there then, Fiat have had Canbus with bulb failure indication since 2006.
Our first Hymer was a 2008 Tramp that had it..
 
I remember working on a 2007 Mk7 Transit with an immobiliser fault (immobiliser indicator flashes really fast - doesn’t recognise key) and that was a CANBUS fault as I remember on the CAN H bus.
My understanding was that Ford introduced the CANBUS system on Transits from late 2006.
 

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