Wanting Led upgrade throughout while keeping stock look... Recommendations?

[83sierraclassic]

Hi I have an 83 GMC Sierra classic and I would like to upgrade to LED both in and out the vehicle. I have no idea where to start there's so many options. I would like to maintain the stock look as much as possible. I have single headlights with the parking lights below that. I prefer really bright white headlights. I'm just not sure what all it takes or where to start. Thanks in advance for any recommendation or advice.

 

[ali_c20]

Welcome from Austria.

LMC has lots of led lights, headlights, sidemarkers, taillights.
Holley retrobright.
Brothers trucks.
Classic parts.
Cj pony parts.

For led bulbs get quality ones. You will need a electronic/zero load flasher for your blinkers and hazard flasher when usind leds.

Hope that helps.

 

[AuroraGirl]

Welcome from Austria.

LMC has lots of led lights, headlights, sidemarkers, taillights.
Holley retrobright.
Brothers trucks.
Classic parts.
Cj pony parts.

For led bulbs get quality ones. You will need a electronic/zero load flasher for your blinkers and hazard flasher when usind leds.

Hope that helps.

The only thing to note, you cant use LED in your Sidemarker on the fender unless you get creative to fix the behavior. Normally they come on with park lamps, and they blink opposed to the turn signal in front if you have the park lamp on

But without park lamps on, they blink with the turn signal

If you use LED 194, you can only have one or the other (by flipping the bulb around)

If you want to keep the switchback functionality, may need to use a module

Daniel Stern Lighting Consultancy and Supply

if you want to install 194 in the sidemarker, and have them work as sidemarkers without other behavior , you can remove the wire running to the turn signal switch, and run it to ground. Then the other wire remains powered by the headlight switch.

I did this on my gmt800, but not for LED. My sidemarkers were nonfunctional entirely because i had voltage always on the turnsignal side. but thats not a common issue in the squares.

the rear sidemarker doesnt blink with the turn, so its not a concern

 

[Tonimus]

There are a ton of options. I recommend getting a glass housing for your headlights so you can swap whatever kind of LED you want in to it. As far as the parking lights, non-polar 194 LEDs should work. I will be testing this on my own soon. Non polars have a rectifier built in so that they work in either orientation.

 

[Scott91370]

RMS Lighting for headlights.

I didn't like the looks of LED in my other lighting. It didn't have the same glow as the incandescent bulbs.

 

[AuroraGirl]

There are a ton of options. I recommend getting a glass housing for your headlights so you can swap whatever kind of LED you want in to it. As far as the parking lights, non-polar 194 LEDs should work. I will be testing this on my own soon. Non polars have a rectifier built in so that they work in either orientation.

I never heard of a non polar 194, have you used them before?

 

[Hunter79764]

A general note, LED bulbs in a reflector will never have the right pattern, same for HID bulbs in reflectors. Those will only have the right pattern in a projector style lens (and even then, it needs to be made for HID/LED, some of the older ones are dialed in for incandescent bulbs). That's not to say it won't work, but it will scatter light where you don't need it, possibly into oncoming driver's eyes, and be less efficient at putting light where you need it. Most LED complete housings are going to have decent patterns, but rarely do they look stock.

And a note about light color, brighter white/blue light helps with pinpoint vision, yellower light helps with broad vision. Blue shrinks the pupils and sharpens focus, but allows less light in (almost like wearing lightly shaded sunglasses). Yellow/red light dialates the pupils, which lets in more light but doesn't focus as well. In driving, this equates to being able to tell it was a german shepherd with a red collar that ran out in front of you 50 feet away with blue light, but being able to see that there is a dog on the side of the road at 100 feet with yellow light. Most municipalities are moving away from the blue street lights and towards yellower LED's for those reasons.

 

[Zelph]

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[Tonimus]

I never heard of a non polar 194, have you used them before?

I have. Not in that specific application, but they are designed to flow electricity just like a filament bulb without the extra impedance. The work when inserted in either direction.

 

[Tonimus]

A general note, LED bulbs in a reflector will never have the right pattern, same for HID bulbs in reflectors. Those will only have the right pattern in a projector style lens (and even then, it needs to be made for HID/LED, some of the older ones are dialed in for incandescent bulbs). That's not to say it won't work, but it will scatter light where you don't need it, possibly into oncoming driver's eyes, and be less efficient at putting light where you need it. Most LED complete housings are going to have decent patterns, but rarely do they look stock.

And a note about light color, brighter white/blue light helps with pinpoint vision, yellower light helps with broad vision. Blue shrinks the pupils and sharpens focus, but allows less light in (almost like wearing lightly shaded sunglasses). Yellow/red light dialates the pupils, which lets in more light but doesn't focus as well. In driving, this equates to being able to tell it was a german shepherd with a red collar that ran out in front of you 50 feet away with blue light, but being able to see that there is a dog on the side of the road at 100 feet with yellow light. Most municipalities are moving away from the blue street lights and towards yellower LED's for those reasons.

Hunter is not wrong. LED bulbs in the last five years have gotten much better at recreating the pattern of incandescent bulbs and working appropriately in reflectors. I've been running LED retrofit bulbs in my reflector based daily and motorcycle for that long. The main difference is I was able to flatten out the pattern by rotating the LED in the housing to correct for any geometry issues. It's actually a pretty elegant solution.

As far as color, get what you like. Most "ultra white" (without going blueish) work really well. But you can also get ultra-bright yellows now. Don't go blue. Anything over 6800k or so begins to appear with a very noticeable blue tint. 5500k-6000k is my preferred sweet spot. I prefer broad spectrum light to assist with color identification as the amount of throw on new lights is really good.

 

[TotalyHucked]

I have everything LED in my truck. RMS Lighting kit for the 4 headlights (glass, looks stock until you turn them on), various LEDs from Amazon for interior lights, turn signals, tag light and marker lamps, United Pacific sequential LED tail lights (function great, but the lens shatters after just a few weeks. I plan to swap them for another brand in the off season). Don't over think it, other than headlights and tail lights, I just bought what had good reviews on Amazon. You will need 50ohm resistors wired in for the turn signals up front and the tail lights so you don't get hyper flash or solid lights when you turn the blinker on. I tried the LED flasher and it didn't do squat

 

[AuroraGirl]

I have everything LED in my truck. RMS Lighting kit for the 4 headlights (glass, looks stock until you turn them on), various LEDs from Amazon for interior lights, turn signals, tag light and marker lamps, United Pacific sequential LED tail lights (function great, but the lens shatters after just a few weeks. I plan to swap them for another brand in the off season). Don't over think it, other than headlights and tail lights, I just bought what had good reviews on Amazon. You will need 50ohm resistors wired in for the turn signals up front and the tail lights so you don't get hyper flash or solid lights when you turn the blinker on. I tried the LED flasher and it didn't do squat

thats weird

They also make "hyperflash" defeating bulbs now, but i wouldnt be comfortable with a LED creating that much heat below the chip element because of an onboard resistor. that would melt a lot of sockets

 

[Hunter79764]

RMS does seem to have good quality, and plenty of folks have been happy with them. And yes, the better LED's are getting much better about placing the LED element in the right place. Essentially the LED has to be the exact size and shape of an incandecent wire element to get the proper pattern. Newer ones are a lot better than old ones, and honestly probably good enough for an older style glass lens like RMS has. Newer headlight housings (like the ~04 Cat Eye in particular, and fog lights in general) don't have much to catch the scatter and keep it from blinding people. HID's have an arc rather than a filament, which is literally in the shape of an arc and impossible to properly reflect and need to go through a projector style lens. Again, certain newer reflectors are worse than others, and glass housings are probably the most forgiving. They also have the worst cutoff pattern to begin with, so just getting the extra light through it helps, and the glare from the multifaceted front glass is much less of an issue for oncoming traffic, all things considered.

I should note, I'm not against LED's at all, my night vision isn't great so I added them to my motorhome and plan to add them to my Suburban when I have a few extra dollars for it, I've also switched over my DD Yukon Denali with factory projectors and am happy with that, although it isn't as good as an LED specific projector. But I do absolutely hate when LED's and HID's are misapplied and blind people...

Fun story from the lighting industry in the last 30 years, the modern trend of blue headlights was started because high end engineers, mostly German and Japanese, were working to take the blue light out of the headlight pattern to help drivers. Incandescent bulbs make full spectrum light, especially when given full voltage, but the blue was determined to do more harm than good. So they developed projector housings that would break the light into components, and they "threw the blue away" by refracting it to the edges of the beam pattern and left the yellow in the center where it helped. When looking at the car driving by, another driver or pedestrian won't see the yellow (since it is aimed at the road and specifically NOT at someone's eyes), they only see the blue that was tossed aside. That created an association of "blue" headlights and fancy cars, which was fed by the aftermarket with the HID conversion bulbs, blue tint over incandescents, and other technically bad ideas. That actually forced the high end OEM's to start making their headlights more blue based on marketing vs actual engineering.

 

[AuroraGirl]

RMS does seem to have good quality, and plenty of folks have been happy with them. And yes, the better LED's are getting much better about placing the LED element in the right place. Essentially the LED has to be the exact size and shape of an incandecent wire element to get the proper pattern. Newer ones are a lot better than old ones, and honestly probably good enough for an older style glass lens like RMS has. Newer headlight housings (like the ~04 Cat Eye in particular, and fog lights in general) don't have much to catch the scatter and keep it from blinding people. HID's have an arc rather than a filament, which is literally in the shape of an arc and impossible to properly reflect and need to go through a projector style lens. Again, certain newer reflectors are worse than others, and glass housings are probably the most forgiving. They also have the worst cutoff pattern to begin with, so just getting the extra light through it helps, and the glare from the multifaceted front glass is much less of an issue for oncoming traffic, all things considered.

I should note, I'm not against LED's at all, my night vision isn't great so I added them to my motorhome and plan to add them to my Suburban when I have a few extra dollars for it, I've also switched over my DD Yukon Denali with factory projectors and am happy with that, although it isn't as good as an LED specific projector. But I do absolutely hate when LED's and HID's are misapplied and blind people...

Fun story from the lighting industry in the last 30 years, the modern trend of blue headlights was started because high end engineers, mostly German and Japanese, were working to take the blue light out of the headlight pattern to help drivers. Incandescent bulbs make full spectrum light, especially when given full voltage, but the blue was determined to do more harm than good. So they developed projector housings that would break the light into components, and they "threw the blue away" by refracting it to the edges of the beam pattern and left the yellow in the center where it helped. When looking at the car driving by, another driver or pedestrian won't see the yellow (since it is aimed at the road and specifically NOT at someone's eyes), they only see the blue that was tossed aside. That created an association of "blue" headlights and fancy cars, which was fed by the aftermarket with the HID conversion bulbs, blue tint over incandescents, and other technically bad ideas. That actually forced the high end OEM's to start making their headlights more blue based on marketing vs actual engineering.

I have a 05, with a F16 auxbeam 9006 and 9005 on my driver side, I can get the scatter and cut off really well. These are dual chip LEDs i got like 6 years ago.
However, there is some scatter, but I never get flashed, and its less than my aftermarket passenger headlight with a halogen in it..(cheap!) But it did require rotating , and removing the cap on the bulb on the 9005 (high beam)
The high beams kick up the same amount as the passenger side, but the passenger side "chokes" in when its on brights, while my driver stays right. OEM headlight. So I assume the housing quality is big.