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Product Review - Two enthusiastic thumbs up! Thumbs Up!

I had an LED light kit from the Space Cities Panteras crew which I've been really pleased with, but I felt the brake lights were a little underwhelming. They were about equally as bright as the original filament bulbs, but definitely no brighter. I would love a set of Jon Haas's brake lights, but don't have room in the budget for those babies since my engine swallowed the air cleaner stud last year and is being rebuilt, AGAIN.

Anyway, in my quest for brighter brake lights I found a review and recommendation for Red Plasma LED bulbs from West Coast Cougars. They're a bit pricey as far as a pair of LED bulbs goes, but I thought I'd give them a try. Anyway, they are definitely brighter than my old LED bulbs! And they're much brighter when viewed off-angle than the old LED bulbs were.

http://www2.cougarpartscatalog.com/plasma2.html

You can probably find some cheap Chinese versions of the same bulb, but supposedly the guys at WCCC tested a number of different ones with less than satisfactory results before discovering these.

The Plasma LED bulb on the left actually appears brighter in person than in the picture, but you can still see that it's brighter than the standard SMD bulb on the right.


The bulb on the left is the Plasma LED, and the bulb on the right is the SMD LED (old style).


Even off-angle, the Plasma LED bulb is brighter!
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quote:
Here is a dumb question .. will the Pantera wiring take these? Do they draw more amps than the stock ones?

Grasshopper, there are no dumb questions when one is seeking knowledge. Wink

LED bulbs draw much LESS amperage than incandescent bulbs. So the wiring will be just fine.

BUT, the stock flasher unit requires a certain amount of amperage to be flowing in the bulb circuit to create the flashing action.

Install too many LED bulbs and you will likely see the flasher no longer flashing.

To avoid this, you need to upgrade your flasher unit.

By the way.....

Those of us with early cars use the 4-contact Bosch flasher unit. These units are now quite rare and expensive, IF you can even find one.

Should your early 4-contact flasher ever go DOA, using the Pantera Electronics unit is the easy solution, whether you use LED bulbs or not.

Larry

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quote:
maybe Garth has more research

No more research, but here's my logic...

1. We're only concerned about going from 5w to 8w for the running light; a small 3w difference.

2. The wires powering the light appear to be the same size/gauge. And, share the same source/power wire to the tail lights. Therefore, if the factory wiring can handle the original 21w load of the stock brake light, and the same wire size is shared with the 5w tail light, then I have no worries about it's ability to carry the extra 3w to power an 8w load for the new bulb.

3. Last, although "inexpensive" original incandescent bulbs were rated at 5w/21w, "premium" bulbs have been available and used for decades in all manner of cars using the 1157 tail/brake bulbs. These original-style "premium" incandescent bulbs are rated at 10w/27w, and I've not heard of any examples of the additional load causing problems, failures, fires, etc.

Last, history, or the experience of others, gives me peace of mind... Pantera people have been replacing the stock bulbs in their instruments/gauges with higher wattage bulbs (similar delta) for years without any ill affects to the wiring.

Anyway, that's my reasoning. YMMV!

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