Do you remember which kind?

Brake lights
 

I think you really need to add a high mounted third brake light if you’re driving these days to be seen. Danial Stern lighting carries several that can work.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569592968.jpg

Absolutely 6x better.

Spokeswerks sells LED "arrays" not LED light bulbs. Big difference there. Look up array if you don't know what that is.

Do you recall what size resistor you had to use? Also did you put the resistor across the brake light wire to ground? It sounds like there's some interaction between the running light power and brake light power.

This was the LED bulb I've tested. Very disapointed compared to original bulb...

https://www.type911.org/userfiles/pics/photo_1453.jpg

Those Spoke's LED products are beautiful! They're definitely going on the wish list.
Form a consumer point of view it would be nice to have more example photos per product that show how they look behind the lenses :)

It was a 50W 6ohm that comes preassembled in the mountable aluminum heat sink. I ended up wiring in parallel with the 3rd brake light from positive and to ground.

The issue didn’t manifest itself for me until I switched out the high-mount brake light because it was the last one that I changed.

Spokework's LEDs on my 911.
You really need to look close to see the LED array behind the lens.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569692207.jpg

Spokework's LEDs on my 914.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569692276.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569692276.jpg

Compare your standard garden variety LED bulb you can pick up on eBay to the LED arrays that Spokeworks makes.

There's little comparison.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569692534.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569692534.jpg

Pretty sure LEDs shine their light in one direction, not omni-directional like your typical incondescent light bulb.
With the Spokeworks LEDs...all the LEDs face straight back.
With the LED bulb they do not face backwards, but face sideways instead hoping for the reflector to help spread the light...which it does so very poorly.
The Spokeworks LEDs don't use the reflector in the factory housing at all to propagate the light.

I may be wrong, but I believe this is how this all works.

I fitted a single LED stop/tail bulb of this basic design to my Ducati

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569695804.jpg

Tail light is easily visible and very bright even in brilliant sunshine (and the stop is much, much, brighter), and it's only the 30W (6 x 5W LEDs) version.

There are also higher rated ones - like 16 x 5W LEDs for 80W - which seems like it would be crazy obnoxious at night.

Brake lights up only when engaged. I don't understand the issue. Do you mean they are on all the time ?

If it's brighter than the original bulb, that's good. Have a pic ?

I think he means when running lights on, the running/brake light is very bright and doesn't get any brighter when the brake peddle is pressed. When he replaced one LED with the standard 1157 incandescent light, the other LED then acted properly with dim/bright operation.

Teutonics mentioned he had to add a 6 ohm 50W ballast resistor to get the dim/bright operation.

I suspect the LED bulb does not have robust separation of the running light/brake light power and the ballast resistor pulls down on the brake light signal so the LED is on dim with running lights.

On my LEDs, There is a steering diode in series with running lights and brake lights for 2 reasons: 1) Isolation of running/brake power; 2) Reverse voltage protection if somehow the power is applied in backwards.

I don't know how they can burn 30W in a fixture like that. 30W is a massive amount of power. I wonder how hot those would get if left on for a hour or so simulating sitting in traffic with foot on the brake.

I had trouble with heat with the lights below. These burned about 16W and the LEDs would get to over 100C in the office where the ambient was 23C.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569707278.jpg

80W would be crazy bright. It couldn't be used as a rear brake light as it would be too bright. Below is my first attempt at a brake light for my Porsche 914. It used 16 LEDs running 350mA or about 14W. These were more like red spotlights rather than brake lights. I ended up running the LEDs at 45mA. Only made one pair of these and they're still on my 914.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569707278.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569707278.jpg

This is exactly what I meant, thank you.
I’ve attached a pic to show what I mean. The left side is the LED and the right the original bulb.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1569710672.jpg

A standard 1157 burns 21w for the stop filament and 5w for the running light. So 30w would only be 15% more power draw. Seems to run much cooler than the halogen I took out. And no filament(s) to break from vibration.

I agree with you. That's a perfect explanation.