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ZEVO LED taillights

1K views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  tommy 
#1 ·
Has anyone here tried the SYLVANIA ZEVO® LED lights? Since I drive on the interstate at midnight every night I want to make my car brighter. I've been doing a lot of research but I want to ask someone who has first have experience.
 
#2 ·
Illegal gray market crap. The tail lights on any car are only street legal when equipped with the exact type of bulb they were designed for. This means that all LED retrofits for conventional bulbs in automotive safety lighting can never be street legal.

LEDs are a fine light source but are a very different light source then the incandescent bulbs the CRX tail light optics are designed for. The only way to be sure your tail lights are putting out the correct amount of light in the proper pattern is to use the correct incandescent bulb they are designed for.

For best and legal performance your best bet is to make sure your lenses are clean both inside and out. If the reflector is badly degraded then refinishing the reflector will significantly improve the performance. Make sure there are no corrosion issues in the connectors and bulb socket so the proper voltage can make it to the bulb. Install a new 1156 or 1157 incandescent bulb depending on if the location calls for a one or two filament bulb.

Ignoring the legal aspect and just looking at the performance. The fact is that most of the LED retrofit bulbs perform worse, often much worse then the proper incandescent bulbs when used in a lamp designed around an incandescent bulb.

I would need to know the exact bulb your looking at to give a detailed description of why it would be expected to perform poorly in CRX tail lights. When I searched around for technical details on ZEVO LED bulbs there were a couple of styles. Some would focus poorly thus limiting light output. Others looked like they bounced all their light output off the reflector so would perform especially bad in an aging tail light assembly. Many say "for off road use only" on the package. The manufactures web site says they are only for interior or license plate lights.

Mike
 
#3 ·
I had LEDs on my headlights on my EP3, and have to say that the output was marginally worse. I then got religion and had a full retrofit done, which works infinitely better, has a good, clear cutoff, and would recommend that avenue to pursue instead.

I did also do LEDs everywhere else on the car, and think that's a worthy upgrade, just not the headlights. The output is universally many degrees better, but to each his own.
 
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