Philips 1156 LED ok for Stop or Turn signals in 2000 VW Golf?

Quick question (thank you in advance!):

In a recent thread, Alaric and Virgil mentioned a Philips 1156 LED replacement:

For an LED, the Philips here might fit the bill....

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The linked Philips LED bulb is actually designed for back-up lights, and it is probably the best bulb for this particular application.

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Q: Although designed for back-up lights, would the above LED also work well in a stop or turn application?

The car in question is a 2000 VW Golf (Mk IV), which employs P21W bulbs for the Stop, Turn, and Back-Up functions. I'm currently using Honda P21W bulbs for Stop and Turn (Virgil, thank you again for the recommendation there!) and am very happy with them, so I'm just wondering for the more-or-less distant future when those bulbs eventually burn out. If the Philips LED is not a great improvement, I'll stick with the Honda bulbs -- but it's fun to think ahead about safe & legal upgrades, if the Philips LED falls into that category. =)

Cheers and Thanks very much.

In my case they didn´t work as expected for Turn neither in my Hilux (90s) nor in my Pathfinder (90s). They will light and work BUT since they don´t use that much W when you put either left or right turn. The signal will flicker MUCH faster and the click noise will be faster as well and if you press the hazzard signal both arrow will stay on with constant noise as if they were clicking really fast. It´s annoying more than functional since the lights actually work fine.
A friend of mine to fix that issue used a resistor, but i don´t doing that just to use a led bulb. So in my case i kept the original P21w

AS for stop i wouldn´t know since both of my car use 1157 (P21W-5). I tried some crappy chinese led and they were junk. I was not able to find 1157 LED from respetable mgfs.

Philips makes several different LED retrofit bulbs. Their "Xtreme Vision" line (red P21W, white P21W) are the ones worth trying. Their "Vision" line has considerably lower output. There's a (preliminarily) very good new "Zevo" line from Osram-Sylvania which has reds, whites, and ambers -- this is not the pathetic previous Zevo line with the frosted plastic dome; I'm talking about these.

However, unless you are prepared to spend several hundred dollars on photometric testing or wait around (probably in vain) for Philips or Sylvania to do the photometric testing, there's no way of knowing objectively whether any of these will work well enough to suffice legally and technically in the 2000 Golf. From an engineering standpoint, in terms of how those lamps are constructed, they probably will. You can get at least a working idea with a tryout like this, but do heed the warning at the end of that post.

Also note that your car's turn signal flash rate will probably go haywire (much too fast or much too slow) and you'll probably get a bulb-out warning indication on the dash if any of these bulbs are installed without also installing "load resistors" -- if you go that route, skip past the huge amount of toy junk on the market and get the Philips units, one per bulb.

As far as which bulbs to put where, use the red ones for the brake lights and the white ones for the reversing lamps, obviously. I like the white ones in amber-lensed rear turn signals, too, because they shift the color more towards yellowish and away from reddish (while almost always remaining within the legal boundary for the yellow turn signal color), thus improving visual contrast between the brake light and the turn signal at a distance.

Having read all that, you might decide just to leave well enough alone and not mess with it. But if you do want to experiment...there's your info!

Virgil and GePa,

Thank you very much, both of you! There's clearly much more to this than I had any idea about. =)

Virgil, I'm filing away all the (much-appreciated) info you've sent, in case I someday wish to go farther down this route -- but as you've predicted, I think I'll leave well enough alone(!). If the 796 on my reversing/back-up lamps ever go out, maybe I'll consider the Philips Xtreme Vision white LED for that function...but for Stop and Turn, I just want the car to be as safe as possible, and I've no reason to particularly trust my photometry-judging (or resistor-soldering) skills. =)

Thanks very much again -- this is a great forum!

Cheers -- C

I can't see the HID planet link, but at walmart today I spotted some red 1156 and 1157 zevo/osram bulbs. One red SMD led mounted on each side of a robust looking metal three pronged heatsink. Are these the good ones? I was considering trying a pair to try out given their liberal return policy, but I couldn't find any reviews on them.

I'm in the middle of some test work with those new-generation Sylvania Zevo LED bulbs that were just released. Some of them work quite well in some lamps. Some of them work quite poorly in many lamps. The plain Sylvania-branded ones (without "Zevo") aren't recommendable in any lamps. Sylvania is taking sort of an "interesting" approach to marketing these: they tested some of them in what they decided are the six most common lamps for the given bulb type, got what they consider to be acceptable results in some proportion of those six, and...that's it. They went to market. Sure , there's an "off road use only" warning (heh heh heh, if you get our drift, wink wink) on the back of the box, which precisely nobody will observe. And they're not even making a pretense at developing or maintaining a list of acceptable applications.

-Virgil- said:

I like the white ones in amber-lensed rear turn signals, too, because they shift the color more towards yellowish and away from reddish (while almost always remaining within the legal boundary for the yellow turn signal color), thus improving visual contrast between the brake light and the turn signal at a distance.

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1. Not to be controversial but I'd expect that most of the time, putting a white LED behind an amber lens would result in a pale yellow light, more white than amber, not really worth trying out unless to prove the point. The legal definition of turn signal colour must be pretty lax! Just use an amber LED!

2. Is visual contrast between brake lights and indicators really needed? Red turn signals have worked in the US for ages because it's the flashing that does it, not the colour. If you don't like red turn signals, the answer is amber and not yellow.

markweatherill said:

I'd expect that most of the time, putting a white LED behind an amber lens would result in a pale yellow light, more white than amber, not really worth trying out unless to prove the point. The legal definition of turn signal colour must be pretty lax! Just use an amber LED!

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In the U.S., the "amber" lenses are actually SAE yellow, which is not Selective Yellow. Recent changes to UNECE regulations have aligned their definition of amber to match the colorimetry of SAE Yellow. Very high color temps on LEDs may result in some unusual-looking colors through a colored lens. Very high CCT LEDs can make a red lamp look rather pink.

Is visual contrast between brake lights and indicators really needed? Red turn signals have worked in the US for ages because it's the flashing that does it, not the colour.

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Yes, it is. Yellow rear turn signals are much more effective at preventing certain types of rear-end collisions than the CHMSL. (Besides, yellow turn signals ALSO flash, so that part doesn't even get into the equation.)

Speaking of flashing, if a driver is signalling a turn but also tapping the brakes, it may be difficult to for another driver to discern which is the stop lamp and which is the turn lamp (meaning the following driver might not be able to tell if the forward driver is turning left into a business, or just changing into the right lane), even if the turn and stop lamps aren't incorporated (that is, combined into a single compartment or a single set of compartments). Sure, the CHMSL will at least help indicate the driver is slowing, but a complicated message still spells delays. An extra bit of delay in interpreting the forward driver's intent can mean the difference between a honked horn and raised middle finger, and property damage, bodily injury, or death. A separate yellow rear turn signal is much more effective at disambiguating the entire message than the CHMSL is.

There's real data on this:
Sullivan J. M. and Flannagan M. J. (2008). The Influence of Rear Turn Signal Characteristics on Crash Risk. DOT HS 811 037. (Technical Report)
and
Allen K. (2009). The Effectiveness of Amber Rear Turn Signals for Reducing Rear Impacts. DOT HS 811 115.

markweatherill said:

1. Not to be controversial but I'd expect that most of the time, putting a white LED behind an amber lens would result in a pale yellow light, more white than amber

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That's a guess. Reality does not support it.

not really worth trying out

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Certainly it is -- that's how we test our guesses to see if we're right.

The legal definition of turn signal colour must be pretty lax!

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Not really, no.

Just use an amber LED!

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That's another way to do it.

Is visual contrast between brake lights and indicators really needed?

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Are brake lights really needed? I mean, if you're paying attention you can see the vehicle in front of you growing larger in your field of vision; that should be plenty good enough without need of special lights to show you the vehicle is slowing or stopping...right?

Red turn signals have worked in the US for ages

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...and the data show clearly that they haven't worked as well as yellow ones.

because it's the flashing that does it, not the colour.

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That's another guess on your part, that reality doesn't support.

If you don't like red turn signals, the answer is amber and not yellow.

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Actually, the two terms are equivalent. US regulators say "yellow"; UN regulators say "amber", and they are referring to the same color.