LED "bulb" in Lucas-style Tail Light

[Huladog_imp]

Several of us have installed a Lucas-style tail light which does a lot to "tighten up" the rear fender's appearance but the single conventional tail light bulb let a lot to be desired since the aftermarket tail lights don't come with a parabolic reflector and a lens that's designed to diffuse the meager light output of the single filament.

The conventional bulb does work, just that I felt I needed more light output so idiot drivers would have a better chance of seeing me and I didn't feel light wiring up additional lights.

A friend who has resurrected his old Suzuki GS-something from back in the day recommended getting LED's from [url=http://superbrightleds.com]superbrightleds.com so I dug around their site and [url=http://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/tail-brake-turn/1157-led-bulb-dual-intensity-25-led-motorcycle-bulb/170/767/]found these:



What's interesting is that they have the array of LED's firing straight back but they also have a ring of white LED's behind those red LED's to give you illumination for your license plate.

I had to do more research on their site to figure out why they say to get a RED LED for a RED tail light when you would think the white LED would give you a brighter tail light, but nope something to do with how a white LED puts out less red light and the rest of the light output from the white LED gets filtered out by the red tail light housing.

Interesting. I also remembered some science about how red/blue/green combined (or some such combination of colored lights) when added together would give you a "white" light. Light coloring differs from how we go about mixing paint which is what throws me off.

Anyway, 'nuff rambling. Much happier with the light output now that I have multiple points of light instead of the single filament of the stock bulb.



OK so $12.99 per bulb (plus about $2.99 for quick mailing) isn't cheap but it's a lot less than some of their other 1157 bulbs that cost $24 or so! Beats getting something like Hyperlites and going through more hassles with wiring again.

Aloha,
Huladog