XEvo/X8 LED indicator bulbs, the (hopefully) final chapter

[loonymoon]

I tried yet another type of LED bulb in my XEvo today. For the last few months I've been running with one LED 501 wedge tower like this:



and one normal amber coloured W5W wedge bulb each side. I did this because I wasn't happy with the standard bulb's giving a non-descript and easily misable pink hue  but also wasn't entirely happy with the LED towers because although much brighter and more obviously orange than the standard wedges, they were much more directional, and viewed from some angles just gave small pin pricks of light which again could be missed.


SO, I ordered a couple of these:



Which were described as Ultimate 1 Watt Ultra  amber LED's which although just one diode gave a supposed wide angle 120 degree spread of light.

I only ordered two rather than the necessary four as I didn't know if they'd really be any better and they were £6.50 each bulb!!

However compared to the LED towers they do seem to be. They're certainly much brighter and definitely more orange than the standard wedge bulbs. Viewed from directly behind, the towers give a bigger reflection in the indicator reflectors, but the source of light from the ultra LED's is brighter. The difference between the two is more noticible when viewed from more acute angles, where the ultra LED gives a band of reflection off the reflectors when the tower's light disappears into pin pricks. See what you think from the following photos and video. Remember both of these types of bulbs give a more definite amber/orange colour than the standard bulbs.

Top is the tower, bottom is the 1watt ultra. Viewed from a few angles.







And a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3v5Jjcf1ew

[Dave Milnes]

Looks like the old problem of either bright lights or better diffused ones.
I bought  a pair of these for the Nexus front sidelights but they wouldn't go through the holes in the back of the lights...

[loonymoon]

Yes, they'd be too long for the indicators as well due to the amber dome.

I realised the X8/Evo is not the only recent scoot to have rubbish pink indicators, the ones on Smurphs new Xmax are just as bad if not worse as they also have red lenses but there's only one bulb each side on the Xmax.


I think I'm going to plump for the Ultra LED as the best compromise, so I'm going to need to order a couple more.

[loonymoon]

I just ordered two more of the ultra LED bulbs to replace the towers. £5.99 each when 2 or more are ordered.

I wondered whether to also replace the brake light bulbs R10W and tail light bulbs W3W with similar ultra LEDs to the ones I'm using for the indicators, but I can't find direct replacements.

[loonymoon]

All done now - 4x Ultra LED's not cheap at £5.99 each but I'm much happier with the result and hopefully they should last a while. Good thing now is I've got loads of spare bulbs - around 10 yellow W5W standard bulbs and 4x LED tower amber bulbs.

If anyone's interested in the amber 501 LED towers I may be able to let you have them for a small fee (they were £2.99 each originally).