LED Parking, Tail and back up lights.
The reason I did this was power reduction. I wanted to be able to leave my parking lights on for hours at a time, with minimal affect on the battery, while I’m camping or parked in the woods, etc.
The front parking lights and rear side marker lights also use 194s or similar, so I ordered colored bulbs and again went with WLEDx5. I figured the wider angle would be good for this application, but that might have been a mistake. The rear side marker red LEDs work just fine and are at least as bright as the stock bulbs. Incidentally, I found the housing on the driver’s side rear marker light to be melted! That’s justification enough for me to switch to LEDs. I imagine the lightbulb came loose at some point and made contact with the housing melting it.
The front amber parking lights were not as bright as I thought they would be though. This is where a slightly brighter or more focused LED might be more beneficial, but the WLEDx5 still works and I'll leave it in for now.
On comment on installing the WLEDx5 bulbs in the marker lights. I never had any problems with doors, but for some reason, the contacts didn't work very well in the marker lights. I had to bend the little contact wire outwards slightly on the bulbs to get them to stay turned on.
License plate lights were also swapped out for WLEDx5 in white. There are two 194s here. The LEDs are so much brighter than it actually lights up the whole back of the Land Cruiser, which may not be so good. Also, I could imagine getting pulled over by some cop thinking that the white light has a bluish tint to it and that I’m generating blue light to the rear. A lower intensity and probably directional LED would be better for the license plate light. Or going to just one license plate instead of two, which I might try.
For taillights, I went with SBL’s 3 watt luxeon 1157s in red. These are the brightest LED taillights they make and they work awesome! I would say they are definitely as bright as the stock bulbs, if not brighter.
I went the next step and ordered white 3 watt luxeon 1156s for the back up lights. These did not work well at all. And considering the stock incandescent back up light is 27 watts it’s not surprising why. A 3 watt LED is impressive, but 27 watts of incandescent does put out more light.
As for turn signals, I left the stock bulbs in since they are only used with the engine running and don’t drain the battery. I did test the white LED 1156 in the rear turn signal to see if it would flash and it did. I didn’t test it in the front turn signal.
First picture show LED on the left and stock bulb on the right in taillight mode. Second picture shows LED brake light on the left, stock brake light on the right. Third picture, shows LED back up light on the left and stock back up light on the right. The picture makes the LED backup light seem nearly as bright or brighter, but it effectively wasn't. Stock back up lights went back in. As far as the taillights, there wasn't much difference, but the LED did seem slightly brighter in taillight mode and about the same in brake light mode to my eye.
By my calculations, the parking lights and taillights use up about 4.5 amps of power. With LEDs, I’m only using about .310 amps or roughly the equivalent of a single stock 194 bulb. For leaving the parking lights on long term, the dash lights can be turned off with the rheostat on the dash.
A 40Ah battery will drained by the stock parking lights in less than 9 hours. That’s completely drained. The LEDs would take 129 hours to completely drain, or more than 5 days. Basically, my goal was to be able to leave the lights on overnight with minimal affect on the battery and this definitely accomplishes that.
