- Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:25 pm
#97267
I'm generally very pleased with them too. It's all down to quality at the end of the day, same as it is with normal bulbs.
If it cost you £1.99 for no-name bulbs off a Chinese ebay re-seller, you'll get £1.99 quality bulbs which will probably be sub-standard and won't last very long. If it cost £9.99 for named brand bulbs from a reputable LED bulb supplier, you'll get £9.99 quality bulbs that will do what they are supposed to and last well.
It's all about the quality of the microelectronics and the heat-sinking with LEDs. Most failures are either down to poorly made control circuitry that can't cope with the "dirty" electricity and vibration provided by a motorcycle or there is insufficient heat-sinking leading to popped LED chips. Both of these things cost time and money at the manufacturing stage.
I have LED lighting throughout my 612 bullet. Including the headlamp (which is running on DC). It's all absolutely fine and draws about 2 Amps total when all the lights are on. Technically the headlamp is now illegal and should fail an MOt but they would have to know it was an LED bulb and I can see no way fo telling without removing the lamp and looking at it. The beam pattern is crisp and perfect, although it did take some fiddling with the angle of the "filament" (which on this bulb IS adjustable and came with instructions for how to do it).
For reference, my headlamp bulb was about £45, the stop and tail was about a tenner, the flasher and sidelight bulbs were £4.99 each. Instrument bulbs were about £2.99. I also forked out about £15 for a top quality electronign flasher relay that will give a steady 60 flashes/min on anything between 4 and 48v regardless of the load applied.
If you have coloured lights, you should use LEDs the same colour. The lens is easily overwhelmed by the LED output and can just appear white. This can cause an issue with the numberplate light for the MOT if it uses a white lens. None have yet noticed but I'll throw an incandescent in there for the MOT if it ever crops up.
An unanticipated advantage of an LED brake light is it illuminates 0.2 seconds quicker than a filament bulb. Doesn't seem much but at 70mph, that's 6 metres! The difference between being fine and becoming the filling in a car sandwich in suddenly braking motorway traffic.
Oh, you can't use LED headlamps on AC lighting. I tried, it did not end well.
