After having a second brake bulb go on my ZS in the last two months I'm not really game for paying £11 for a damn bulb each time it goes (due to the red tint on them) and as such I want to go over to LEDs instead. Has anyone got any experience with the LED brake bulbs from eBay and have any particular ones to recommend - they need to have the offset pins on them so any 380 type bulbs are useless.

The ones I've been looking at all have the SMD LEDs on them as opposed to those which are traditional LEDs, but knowing which ones are actually half decent is hard to tell from a listing. I've got some shortlisted which are coming in at around £9 a pair and emit around 450-480lm each (on paper) and on the other end of the scale I've found the Cree bulbs at around £22 which are around 1000lm. 

Has anyone else gone down the LED avenue at all?

 

Genuine Cree are made in America and are generally quite awesome, you have to be careful of copies on ebay though.

I have swapped all of my rear clusters (alright I've still got the fogs waiting) to fairly cheap LEDs from eBay for £10 a set.

Be sure of your bulb type as Ford have some swapped things about on the Mk3s between Z/ZS and Ti/TiX.

The only issue I am having is that the brake LEDs (which for me are 382 single filament) are causing interference with my DAB which I have yet to resolve, I may resort to buying better quality ones which should fix this.

You can see it all on my build thread (click on my signature if on PC or search for Phil's Build Thread)

Otherwise plug and play for brake lights but best to get red lights rather than get white and rely on the cluster lens as they will come through pink.

cree , osram , philips , samsung all market leaders in led bulb technology.

for combined brake / tail light on a mk2 focus with offset pins i fitted these  2 years ago and still going strong , also twice as bright thanks to the samsung chips

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Red-567-PR21-5W-780-BAW15d-Bulb-SAMSUNG-LED-Indicator-Tail-Stop-Brake-Light-15W-/352015388289?hash=item51f5c08e81

absolute bargain at £12 for 2

18 hours ago, Phil21185 said:

.....Otherwise plug and play for brake lights but best to get red lights rather than get white and rely on the cluster lens as they will come through pink.

I need red bulbs/LEDs in any case as I've got clear lenses on the back

15 hours ago, biff55 said:

cree , osram , philips , samsung all market leaders in led bulb technology.

for combined brake / tail light on a mk2 focus with offset pins i fitted these  2 years ago and still going strong , also twice as bright thanks to the samsung chips

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Red-567-PR21-5W-780-BAW15d-Bulb-SAMSUNG-LED-Indicator-Tail-Stop-Brake-Light-15W-/352015388289?hash=item51f5c08e81

absolute bargain at £12 for 2

Thats the sort of thing I'm after, and indeed £12 for both is far better value than £11 per halogen. I'll those ones on order now