Red Led Lights And Auto Lighting

I'm looking to buy good led light bulbs and was wondering where is a good place. I want a price range of the happy medium. Not too high, but not too low. I'm hesitant on going with ebay, because so many people sell junk on there and I have been ripped off before. The lighting stuff on there is very sketchy in my opinion. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answers

Specialist A

Your right on with the ebay bulbs going down hill with lighting stuff. It just seems that too much cheap stuff is now being produced over seas (no offense), and it just sells for less and is lesser of a quality. What creates the huge problem with all of it though, is that anybody just becomes an affiliate of that product and makes the product seem real cool and of good quality just to sell it. They make their percentage and we get crap.

Anyways, to answer your question to the best of my knowledge. There are a couple of very good sources out there to buy quality led bulbs. One that shoots to the top of my brain is superbrightleds.com. I am not about to link to them because they are this websites top competition, but they are a reputable seller by all means. That's the route I would go.

Specialist B

There is a trick to buying leds and lighting stuff from ebay. Firstly, you need to see where the light is made, and then find a seller that sells his or her stuff with a warranty or exchange policy. Another biggy is to check to see where the stuff is being shipped from.

If it is coming from Japan, that answers some questions right there for you. There are a good amount of seller that are direct affiliates of the major distributions, but they just sell them for less and make less on commission of the sale. I do buy leds and neons and such from ebay, I just look closely at all of the details when buying the stuff. It takes somewhat of an experienced ebayer to buy like this.

But if you don't want to go through that, the site that Joe just listed above is a great guide, and I will just leave it at that guide. Thanks for visiting the site, and sending us the great question. Hope we were of some help.

How Long Can I have My Neons On For, With My Car Off Or Not Running?

I was just wondering how long my battery will last, or if my car will start right up with having my led neons on at a party with my car just sitting there. I would like to catch some attention of others and it's somewhat of a cool idea. Let me know what you think. Thanks guys!

Cassie U.

Thanks for sending in the great question to us Cassie. When it comes to auto lighting, there is always the factor of how well the battery of the vehicle is going to withstand all the lighting. Let's start with talking about the variables when it comes to neons and car lighting in general.

Auto Lighting Variables And Battery Factors

Battery Age:

The age of a battery is a pretty big deal. Since batteries pretty much just die after a certain amount of years, you sort of need to keep track of things like this. Your battery should have a date edged into with a tool of some sort or else there will be a sticker setup to where you can read it almost like a calendar.

Alternator Efficiency:

How well does your alternator RE-charge your battery when you start the vehicle. An alternator is a pretty big deal when it comes to the whole electrical system of the vehicle. Not only that, but at what rate does the alternator pump juice to the entire electrical system as well. This is a huge deal. A way to test how good your alternator is, is to have the vehicle running and un-hook the battery from the car and see how long it runs on it's own.

Lighting Device Type:

Maybe your running low voltage leds.. I have left my underbody leds on for a good week without my noticing and came back to start it and IT STARTED RIGHT up. Maybe your running old school lamps though all the time. Those are going to drain your battery in a heart beat versus led lighting. It all just depends on what type of lighting you are running in the vehicle. Usually the newer the setup, the better you are. Not always but usually.

Size Of Battery:

Just like anything else in this world, size does matter. A tiny little lawn mower battery is not going to have as much bang as a two thousand cranking amps battery from a semi. This one is pretty easy to figure out, so I wont get too deep into this one.

So to answer your question completely, you need to weigh out all these different variables and figure out where your stand point is. If your real worried about it, then change up the variables is what I tell people to do. Buy a new battery, go with led lights, and install a new alternator.

Red Led lights and other lighting devices are becoming really popular in the automotive industry. A couple of handy questions should be looked into to really help us when figuring out our lighting answers.

Are Red led lights illegal to drive with on?

You would love for to just answer this question with a big huge, "Why yes! they are totally legal! Drive around with them on all the time and have everybody think your car is awesome!" But to be honest, this is not going to be legal in that many states or areas at all.

A cool thing to remember though, is the idea of how many places you could have the lights on when your not driving. Bring your car to car shows, show it off to friends in parking lots. There are a lot of cool uses for the lights still.

Can I put red led lights in my wheel wells?

Cool idea! I'm sure it looks awesome, but truth be told I'm sure you will get pulled over for it. Especially if it the color of white, red or blue. The rule of thumb is, if it is the colors of the emergency vehicle colors than it is very illegal. And in some states like here in Minnesota, they have the right to impound your car as soon as you get pulled over for pushing the limits on these types of cars. Might want to be something you watch out for.

I see people put neons or leds in their vehicle grill? Is this illegal?

Back to the emergency vehicle lighting laws is what I'm going to go with on this one. But I'm sure even if you go around those three colors and those laws, you are still going to get pulled over. The laws on lighting outside of the vehicle are pretty picky when you get down to it.

I get this question a lot..

Are Led lights illegal on my car? Here or there.. On this??

Well guys, this is a tough question to answer. Due to the fact of so many variables that are brought into play. It's tough for to just generalize if that location is illegal in your location of driving and what not.

Boy oh boy, I hope you know the answer to this one. I know most state laws state that "as long as the lighting color is not the color of the justice program's lighting ( cop colors like red, white, and blue), than it is fine to use on your vehicle."

I have also heard that it is illegal to have lighting under the body of the car because it obstructs the view of other drivers. Sort of an attention getter in other words. So people say that when you hang your underbody neons, to hang them so that the rods physically are not visible but instead only the lighting is visible.

Which in my opinion, is how you would want them anyways.

The law that holds us back the most, is the one that states, "no lighting source should obstruct the views of other drivers." So catching the attention of other drivers is illegal to say it in complete simplicity. This pretty much out rules the WHOLE IDEA of underbody neons being fine to drive with on under the law.

Hate to burst a lot of bubbles with these laws, but they make it tough for these underbody neons. I myself drove with them on for a little while and it only took minutes for me to get pulled over in Minnesota here. Kind of sucks, but I can see the points behind all of the laws.

Even though they all have arguable points, there is usually no agreeing in the court of law. For ONE, cell phones are of the hugest distractions out there on the road.. yet there still legal to talk to people on.

I WOULD SAY, YOU BE THE JUDGE on if you think you can get away with it. It all comes down to the cops in the area in which your driving and a lot of other variables that you may not have your hands on to be able to change.

Here's another guide to seeing if neon underbody kits are legal or not. They really all say the same things that I already mentioned. Just figured that maybe another guide would help assure you.

To truly answer this, you really have to dig into your state laws for technical terms. The rule of thumb from what I have heard around the car scene is

- If the light is visible from outside the vehicle by the actual cops or other drivers, THAN it is a "distraction" to other drivers making it ILLEGAL.

Another one I have heard

- If the light colors are the same colors as the emergency vehicles, than it is illegal WHEN SEEN by others. Don't take this one wrong, and read it carefully. When seen by others is the thing that needs to be taken from this.

ALWAYS STAY AWAY FROM EMERGENCY VEHICLE COLORS is a good rule of thumb with all of this lighting stuff. Interior Neon lights being legal is somewhat of a touchy topic and there are so many different opinions of drivers and police officers.

AGAIN, every state is different and this is not in stone BUT INSTEAD a rough idea of what the laws will regard. So let's jump in to figuring out, are led lights legal on outside of vehicles.

- In the rear of the vehicle, the colors need to be red. Meaning your running lights and or brake lights need to be red. If you don't trust me, test that. Once when I was a young teenager I thought it would be cool to clear out my tail lights so they were white. Within an hour, I got informed by law enforcement that wasn't going to fly.

- As far as the front and sides of the vehicle.. this is going to change up a lot with different state laws.

**All emergency vehicle lights are not good colors to try and experiment with. That being red and blue. I have heard that the color blue is banned in every state and that makes sense.

- As far as LED lights.. laws are stated for vehicles and seem darn picky about the leds, BUT then again we see manufactures putting them in stock for motorcycles and even a lot of new vehicles. The way I see it, why not have bright enough lights for us to see at night.. TOO BRIGHT OF LIGHTS is a different story, but that's a different topic.