Melting/cracking rear tail light lenses on 355 (and 360/550/575/575SA)

Brilliant !!!

 

Do you buy two or four? - there are four white lenses in the back.

 

But will they fit a wooden F50 ?

 

Great info, thanks! finally an explanation of why my inner lenses are 'bubbles' and not flat. And here I was hoping I had some rare 'upgrade'

 

Because LED's are sensitive to the direction of the electric current, I had to switch the two wires going to at least one light socket (i.e. swap places with each other) in my tail lights in order to align the LED with the Italian current flow.

Standard light bulbs, in contrast, are *not* current sensitive (to direction), so the Italian wiring means nothing to standard bulbs.

However, unless you are fabulously lucky, you'll have to swap the two electric wires that go to at least one light socket in the tail light assembly when you install LEDs in place of the old light bulbs. Think of it as switching the + positive with the - negative wire (though that's really not always what is actually going on).

 

I dont know what you guys are on about....I never put my car in reverse and rarely use the brakes. These italian cars are made to go forward at high speeds and corner like their on rails. lol

 

D'Oh! So *that's* what I was doing wrong!




I'm not worthy!

 

Here's my bubble lens....

Wondering if that explains why my clutch wore out in 5k miles from the previous owner - he was always driving the F1 in reverse!!!
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........................thats the worst I have ever seen...!!!!!! 300 bucks for new ones from Ricambi or search for them on ebay....!

 

Yikes!

 

That bulb was actually burned out too, I suppose from the overheating. Just to point out that even the Big 3 get it wrong...check out the Chrysler 'cloud cars' 3rd brake light (Stratus, Cirrus). Ours blew twice, melted the plastic. On the road at least half of these cars have 3rd brake lights out.

Now for replacement...are these lenses pretty much all identical? I've seen some on Ebay but they weren't the exact same P/N (but sure looked identical, front and back). Just for fun I may actually try to 'fix' these lenses by heating and reshaping (no cracks or anything, just look round instead of square). Nothing to lose!

 

Here's my experience with LED's. I posted this recently on TSN (The Saab Network):

Re: LED Light Conversion
Posted by Erich (more from Erich) on Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:38:03
In Reply to: LED Light Conversion, BZF, Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:23:36
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I tried this myself. Almost all of the LED's are not as bright as the normal bulbs. All of them have a narrower viewing angle (they don't fill the lens with as much light). The brake lights and rear running/parking lights will cause a bulb failure message unless you use the resistors. The resistors get VERY hot and completely negate one of the advantages of the LED's----reduced electrical load. The use of the LED's for turn signals will also require load resistors otherwise they will blink too fast. I think you cannot use the special relays (at least on my car) because the blink rate is controlled by the SID.

I installed white LEDS on the interior, for the front parking lights and for the rear license plate. Without exception, every white LED failed after a short time (I checked my electrical system and voltage is within specs.). I contacted Superbright LED's and they said they would send me a postage paid return label. They never did even after repeated email contact. In addition, one time I ordered 3 amber LED's (25 bucks a pop!) and they sent me three white LED's.

I've re-installed the original incandescent bulbs but now continue to get the brake light failure warning every time I start the car. Maybe the circuitry got damamged.

I spent A LOT of money for their best LED's for all three of my cars. Overall I am very disappointed. Until LED technology, for these purposes, improves some more I would save my money and stick with what you have.

Erich

 

Erich, I had one red LED from SuperBright fail, too. The rest have been fine, though.

 

I have only had white fail. Maybe 10 bulbs and not all the same type (part #). I think white is the "newest technology" (although not new any more). You probably know that they use different substances/compounds to create different colors of light. I can only imagine that it's harder to produce LED's that give off white light or they would have had them decades ago (I remember blue LED's were a big deal when they were introduced a few years ago).

The superbright single LED reds were okay on my car for brake lights. Deeper red and almost as bright. A little loss of brightness while gaining the safety advantage of the attention getting quick on time is okay with me.

The big, ribbed metal bodies on the superbright single LED's make me think they're really pushing the limit reliability-wise. It appears the purpose is to be a really large heat sink. I don't mind paying $25 for one LED bulb but only if it will last the life of the car.

 

Can't afford shoes, saving up for my 355 major

 

That white tint is a much better look for the reverse lights, and you've easily solved the heat/melted lense issue by using the LEDs.

I'll be interested to learn if they last appropriately.

 

I also put white LED's in the interior of my 328 and it gave it a kind of hospital look because of the bluish tint. Did not go well with the tan carpet etc. Anyway, put the originals back in which returned it to the "warm" glow."

Bought a number of the tubular white bulbs for the licensce plate lighting etc. I think they use 9 small LED's on a printed circuit board. I would slowly start to lose some of the LED's. They would flicker some days and then eventually burn out. Probably a heat issue since I saw that the tubular plastic housing had little air holes on one side of the housing. They put those there for a reason.

When checking at night I found that on my 328 the back up lights with original incandescent bulbs put out a useful amount of light for backing up as opposed to just enough to let people know my car is in reverse. That was not the case with the LED bulbs.

The superbright LED's in the rear turn signal and brake light housings definitely did not "fill-up" the lenses with light like the original bulbs. It was very obvious there were two source of light in the circular housing. With normal bulbs it looked like a big ring of light and was brighter.

 

Their brightest bulbs (Luxeon) until recently, have only a single LED which unfortunately makes the reflector useless. I see they now have a 5 watt version with some extra LED's on it. Haven't tried the new one but it looks like it could be decent. Brighter and a wider viewing angle. Of course it uses more power but still a lot less than incandescent. I would definitely try these if I had melting lenses! $30 a pop but lenses aren't cheap either.

I'm sure you'll see a big difference in heat readings... 7506 vs. LED