LED for Taillight?

Hi All,

Has anyone used LEDs for the brake/taillight? The goofy glass blade type bulb is making things difficult to find a LED retrofit.

Thanks!
alow

 

im super interested in this too. there must be some easy retrofit. I also want to tie some LED strips into the tail light circuit to light up my rear wheel under the cans of my 6th gen.
more light the better as far as I can tell.....

first person to find an easy answer gets to take the next 2 days off work.

 

I just stuck one in, I'm pretty happy with it so far but I've only done the top bulb. Being a 7443, replacements are getting easy to find. Autoparts stores have them, I see lots of references for SuperBrightLeds.com. I got mine at a local car customization shop as it was convenient.

I haven't had the time to look into how to replace the bottom bulb. I've done some googles but haven't found anything helpful. The top one i can reach with the seat off.

The Honda shop manual seems to imply that I can get the bottom one off the same way but theres framing in the way and I don't think I can get it out. I looked at it but didn't try very hard, I'll probably devote some time to it this weekend

Does anyone have experience changing the lower brake/tail bulb?

Do I have to remove the cowl, or maybe the taillight assembly?

Any hints or references will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Edit: 18Nov2016:
bottoms were pretty easy. I did end up loosening the screws that keep the rear cowl on, in total the cowl loosening and re-tightening didn't take more than 3 minutes. If I had smaller hands I might have been able to get the bottom ones in without cowl loosening but it was really very easy.
I've had the LEDs in for a month or so now and I'm definitely happy with them.

 

It's really easy to change all the rear bulbs if you take the couple of bolts out of the rear seat cowl...10 minutes

 

I've done it. Yes, it's easy to pull the OE bulbs, but a word of caution: the LED bulbs will likely be longer and thus a tighter fit to get in. Possible, just harder than the glass bulb.

I used these:

Putco 247443R-360 Red 7443 Plasma LED Bulb

They've gone up since I bought them (I got them for $52 or so) but they were totally worth it. These things are stupid bright from a very wide angle. Huge improvement over stock. I'm planning on getting the same for my front turn signals when they burn out, or I'm just feeling frivolous.

 

What LED bulb would work for the signals?

 

Because they flash, you may need a resistor. Otherwise they will flash hyper fast. Some bulbs have built in resistors but I can't tell you which ones do. If you pull the old bulbs out and go to an auto parts store, the clerk there should be able to tell you which one and if you need a resistor

 

LED indicators absolutely will flash too fast as their resistance is so much lower than the filament bulbs. Adding resistors in parallel to the LED bulbs is one path to restoring the flash rate, or you can buy an LED-specific flasher relay that takes the place of the standard flasher relay so no resistors are needed.

 

Ah yes, I recall adding a flasher on another bike. What type/part number bulbs does the VFR take?

 

If you have your part number for the old ones, you can cross ref that number for the LED. For that matter, I think a lot of the bulb packaging will say something like "Replaces 4557" or whatever. Go to the store and look or ask for the right one. Really. Not difficult. That's how I found the correct bulbs for my tail/brake lights because I did not know the part number for those.

 

I'm using the Phillips ones right out of the box for the nrake lights, plug right in. They work great.

 

I think I have Phillips in the taillight, they were bought at Autozone for $19-$20, something like that. Zero fitment issue, nice and bright as well. LED turn signals are next.