Incandescent 1156 bulb vs LED replacement

[SMSW]

I've read a number of threads describing how bright LED lamps are, and I've seen pictures posted.

Has anyone put one of their new LED lamps in and then compared it to the old incandescent lamp on the other side of the bike for flashing indicator lamps?

I'm asking this because Superbrightleds.com shows anywhere from 300 to 400 lumens for their replacement 1156's, and I just read online that your standard incandescent 1156 running at 29(?) watts puts out 400 lumens. That makes them nearly equal. I was hoping for a significant increase in brightness, hence my boldfaced question above.

 

[st11ray]

I changed ALL of my bulbs to LED and they are much brighter than incandescent.

 

[Obo]

I put LED's in for all my incandescent bulbs.

Depending on the bulb & style you may find the LED's give you a hot spot as they don't properly use the reflector the way the stock bulbs do.

I debated if I wanted to leave the rear red run/brake & orange turn bulbs in for the following reasons:

For my bulbs there isn't much visible difference in brightness between the tail only and brake on brightness. They also create more of a hot spot in the centers where the bulbs are. As I have 2 additional brake lights abot the 2 stock bulbs the LED's were left in.

The rear direction signals are brighter, but again only in a hot spot - as they don't use the reflector properly and reflect to fill the entire lens.

As for the front turn signals I put in switchback LED's and clear lenses.

So are LED's brighter, yes. Is that brightness just as usable - not in my case. Your bulb design will vary.

 

[spiderman302]

1156 is a single filament bulb the 1157 is dual. There are a lot of brighter led bulbs.

you might want to look at this old thread. Still using the same setup for 6 years.......

rear turn signal mod

 

[spiderman302]

buried in that thread is this

the original 7443 bulb is 21 / 5 watts and emits about 440 lumens of white light.
The lumens drops a lot depending on the density of the red lens (maybe down to 100 - 20 lumens) [I have not tested this lately]
So a 1 watt red led would be roughly equivalent. So look for 2 to 5 watt red LED to be brighter....

 

[mjc506]

You also get the benefit of the faster turn-on/off with LEDs, especially for turn signals and brake lights. This makes them more noticeable for the same brightness. It is worth checking that the brake light is noticeably brighter than the rear running light - contrast is good!