LED Turn Signal Bulbs for the 4Runner

This video contains flashing lights, if that bothers you, be warned!

Over the years, I've tried LED bulbs for the turn signals and brake lights in my 1st gen 4Runner. I found some that worked for the brakes and reverse lights, but for the turn signals, I never found anything that worked well. I found some new SMD tower bulbs, see link below, that seemed like they would work, especially in my modified front housings. This is an effort to make the turn signals more apparent to other drivers.

As the hole in the housing was sized for the regular incandescent bulb, I was limited to LEDs that would fit. Many of the earlier designs were too bulky to fit. This tower design is smaller, both in diameter and height than a regular glass bulb, so a perfect fit. Also, with the amber phosphor on the LED chips, there's no colored coating to flake off over time.

One upside of the LED bulbs is no more voltage drop with the blinkers on. My dash voltmeter needle used to twitch in time to the blinkers with the 2 x 27W incandescent bulbs (~4 amps) and now with 2 x 3W LEDs, that's under 1/2 amp and the voltmeter needle is steady.

I like colored bulbs that both help with the faded lenses and also in case of a broken lamp housing from an off-road incident. Driving on the road with a broken light in a lifted 4x4 is a sure ticket magnet. You can get anything from a simple fit-it-ticket, a citation requiring a visit to a Brake and Light Inspection shop or worse, depending on the mood of the officer who pulled you over. Having a color matching bulb gets around this hassle.

Bulbs:
https://www.superbrightleds.com/search/led-products/1156/
https://www.superbrightleds.com/search/led-products/1157/

Combined Turn Signal and Parking Lights:
https://youtu.be/tMDtc5cL-cI

1157 sockets:
https://amzn.to/3Ezy0fE

More to come, taming the fast flasher relay...

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