Thoughts on my LED light bulb swaps by location (What I like or didn't like)

[Bob98SR5]

So since I was tearing out my hair about my e-locker rewiring project (definitely put that frustration on the back burner), one of the rear instrument panel bulbs decided to crap out. Not to mention, one seemed on the way out. So I decided to buy some LED bulbs for some locations that I hadn't converted before, but will talk about all of them and my thoughts. Oh, all my bulbs were purchased on superbrightleds.com. I've always had a great buying as well as customer service experience with them. Reviews:

INTERIOR
- Instrument panel: I went with Natural White (4K white) 194s. They look fantastic and a bit old school, but with that nice LED look. I didn't change any of the smaller bulbs as they rarely get used.

- Key ring light: I bought the green #74. Excellent addition. Really stands out and diffuses well behind the frosty/clear bezel

- Ash tray: I bought the green #74 again. Eh, not really a big deal since I rarely open the ashtray especially at night.

- Climate control: #74 green (2 for my 1998 5 speed). I really, really disliked the look here. The bulbs I bought didn't diffuse the light as well as the stock green condom'd bulbs, which of course cast a softer green, diffused light. I'm going to keep these stock

- Glove box: #74 in clear white. Excellent addition

- Vanity lights (dual)- I remember buying the Natural White (4K white) a loooong time ago and trying them out. I remember I dropped something at night and flicked them on. It was way too bright for me. I stuck with the stock bulbs here too.

- Vanity mirror (passenger)- didn't do this bulb.

- Cabin dome light- LED bulb (forget the #), excellent addition.

- Cargo area dome light- LED bulb (forget the #), excellent addition too. This one one of the best improvements in lighting.


EXTERIOR
- Rear license plate: excellent addition; highly recommend. Good time to clean up the gaskets and the lenses.

I plan to change out all the exterior bulbs with the exception of the front headlights. Personally I like the stock bulbs. I know this might not be a fair apples-to-apples comparison, but a long time ago I installed the then popular white/blue bulbs (not LED). Wow did it look nice from the front, but they absolutely sucked in the rain and esp foggy conditions. When I went back to stock, I was glad to do so. So perhaps next month I'll do all the exterior bulbs.

Light bar: hmmm, I really like them as they're very functional but I don't think I'll use them much except maybe the 1-2 and on a good year 3 times I go off roading. I'm fine w/ the Hella 500s as they work well enough for me and not to mention, they're period correct (if that means anything to anyone these days).

[YotaFun]

Bob,

Great start on the write up and what you have, will, and recommend not changing.

The only lights I have ever replaced on the dash lights to LED were in the brown truck.
I did everything, and I did it all with green LEDs, including the PRNDL (auto) and ended up after a few months reverting most of them back to stock.
I am sure most of it was poor choice I am sure on my part, I probably would have been more satisfied with the cool natural white as you did yourself, I wanted to stay with the green that was original to the truck but the LED is just not as soft.
I agree with you, the LED in the HVAC unit did not work out the best.

I am not sure how you would feel about it, I have seen guys use red LEDs in the front vanity lights, I am not sure how well that would work.

Your addition to the cargo area is awesome, thank you for the write-up on that, that will be a addition done soon.

I too plan on converting almost all my exterior lights to LED. I have already done my tag bulb and plan on doing the front marker and rear reverse lights.

I have done the front headlamp bulbs which were awesome till I broke the lock ring but the bulbs put out the same beam as a stock halogen just a little brighter, and wasn't too bad in the rain, but they are on the cheaper side, some of the newer ones have a lot more built into them, I plan on updating them here soon, I am actually going to try them on the husbands Rav4 first.

Some upgrade I would like to do is a Flashing 3rd brake light, I believe Sean has done something like this, and I would also like to find the LED tail lights that I believe Ken has (Something like these https://www.ebay.com/itm/96-00-Toyot...3:pf:0&vxp=mtr), I would like to reduce the risk of getting rear ended again, short of installing a loud speaker that screams 'STOP' light are the best option lol.

I would like to do the turn signals too, I believe the retrofitsource.com has a relay or turn signal bulbs themselves for Toyota that reduce the hyper flash, I feel no one around here notices when I want to merge or turn when my signal was on....

[Bob98SR5]

Avi,

Wow sounds like you did the whole enchilada! Yeah reflecting on the LEDs vs the regular bulbs, I really think the LEDs need to be diffused properly esp if the LED design itself doesn't diffuse the light well. Or in the case of the HVAC controls, is too close to the bulb which doesn't allow diffusion.

So I've attached a Word doc of all the descriptions, prices (rounded up), and links to the front and rear Exterior bulbs. For the rear exterior bulbs, I excluded the license plate lights because I had spares. But it's going to cost about $140 + shipping/tax and then about $22 + s/t for the front lights (corners and turn signals). Man these LED companies are rakin' in the cash. I wonder how much these things actually cost them?

I'm thinking of the flashing 3rd brake light too. The few times I saw it in person, it was annoying but damn does it catch your attention! And come to think of it, isn't the whole reason to change all those bulbs out back there is to make your vehicle more visible while braking? So that thought has crossed my mind and perhaps only doing this flashing 3rd brake light mod would do the deed much cheaper than doing everything for + $140 + tax/shipping, right?

That said, one thing I will do no matter what is replacing the anemic backup light. Man those things have bothered me for 20 years now!

[Bob98SR5]

Update:

Since I moved up to Nor Cal, I hardly drive the 4Runner. It seems only on the weekends when we drive somewhere that our Focus EV can't take us without us getting range anxiety. A couple of long night time drives using the white LEDs as the main three cluster lights became too unbearable for me. So finally after about a month of deliberating, I decided to switch them back to stock. My eyes are happier now. Also while I like the LEDs for some accessory lights, I decided to swap the key ring bulb back to stock too because it didn't diffuse as well as I had thought.

So in short, the only interior LED lights I decided to keep were:

- glove box
- ash tray
- cabin dome light
- rear cargo area dome light

[4x4mike]

Did the factory dimmer knob work with the cluster LEDs? Were they still too bright or was it more of a color thing?

[Bob98SR5]

Did the factory dimmer knob work with the cluster LEDs? Were they still too bright or was it more of a color thing?

Mike,

The LEDs worked with the dimmer. RE: color and brightness, the white bulbs were too bright on the instrument cluster and when I turned them down, you could barely see the HVAC LEDs. My eyes are happier back to the stock bulbs w/ the green condoms on the instrument cluster.