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MG MGB Technical - Halogen tail light bulbs

Am considering using halogen bulbs in my taillights, but have some concern that the extra heat might damage the lens, had such an experience when I put such bulbs in fixtures on my sailboat. Any experience out there. thanks!
Kenneth von Wolf Lewis

I have installed halogen bulbs (which I got from LBC) in both my MGA and MGB. They have been in service for over a year without any problems. The bulbs are smaller so that the glass is a bit further from the plastic lenses, which may keep the lenses cooler. I should acknowledge, however, that I do not rack up a lot of miles after dark (but I do use the brakes and signals religiously!) which might also have something to do with it. They are brighter.
Marvin Deupree

I have had these same LBC sourced halogens in both my MGBGT and in the 57 MGA I used to own, and even after several years of use, they never once affected the plastic lenses. As you may know, the MGA lenses are even smaller than the MGB's, and I never had any problem with warpage or melting even with frequent use. The GT is a daily driver, and these lamps have been in that car since 1999. FYI.
Bob Muenchausen

Bob I remember the lens on my 59 as glass, as far as the "B" I've never seen a problem but I have seen problems in many other cars and more then a few with no problems at all. If you have aftermarket lens instal the bulbs on a hot day and use a temp. gun to keep an eye on the lens or lacking the temp gun use the aftermarket lens until you are satified that it won't melt- RIC
Ric

They won't overheat, but I think the physical build quality of the halo lamps stinks. They just don't make good, reliable contact with the socket bases at least in the tail/brake lamp assembly, because the contacts aren't as precisely formed as they are in the regular-issue units.

The one place the halo lamps make all the sense in the world is inside dashboard gauges. MUCH brighter! However, they _do_ cook the rheostat ... fortunately, you don't need to brighten or dim them, they're just brighter.
Ted

Ric:
I think you are thinking of the turn signal lense which was a separate, round bullet point glass unit. The early MGA's used only the plastic combination tail/stop/signal unit with a relay box for the signals. When the later cars like yours came out, they retained the early stop/tail lamp assembly, but dropped the relay and used a separate round turn signal unit mounted above it. AFAIK, there never was a glass lense for the stop/tail/(signal) assembly.

Ted:
I think the build quality of the Lucas tail/stop/signal assemblies was less than spectacular for the MGA and most any lamp put in it could have had crummy contact. The halo lamps I have bought from LBC have only suffered in that the bases were a tiny bit too large in Dia. compared to the typical incandescent and I had to run an old countergear shaft from my junk box into the sockets for both the single and double filament bulbs to enlarge the hole just enough (a few thousandths of an inch) to allow the halo bulbs to drop in place without binding.
Bob Muenchausen

I just installed the LBC tail/brakelight combos in my 69B last week. Fit perfect in the stock Lucas lamp sockets on my car.
Took all of 5 min.
They come with a foam wrapper on the bulb, which you can use to install them without touching the bulb glass.
Andrew Blackley

Not meaning to highjack the thread, but have any of y'all tried LED lights? They're supposed to be really bright and consume very little power as compared to filament bulbs. Do you know of a source for LED lights? Thanks.
Jack Caulder

Dunno about you guys but LEDS are illegal for use in a rear tail light (or any automotive light combo) in this country without a regular filament bulb back up AFAIK...

My pushbike used to run LED rears and i was stopped by the BiB who informed me of this.... A third rear LED brake light is ok because in general it has two normal filament rear brake lights as its back up....

This was about three to five years ago that i heard this so may have changed and of course US readers may have different rules. Personally i think its daft because LEDs will light a fraction of a second faster and are seemingly bullet proof compared to filament bulbs....

Anyone know any different?

~PHIL
Phil

I see lots of vehicles here with LED taillights as standard equipment -- new Cadillacs, for one.... Not to worry though, our headlight technology is still way behind the rest of the world!
Rob Edwards

yeah, I've seen lots of things using led taillights.
new buses and semi's use them almost exclusively now.
as for if they'd work in an mg, i think you'd need some sort of array of them. if someone sells such a thing, i guess you could give it a try. i don't think i will, i have a feeling it'd look pretty odd, but good luck i guess.
Peter Ballinger

The LEDs come in a variety of colors and would work great as a tail/turn signal. The only problem I see is that they do not draw much current. Last I remember, the turn signal relay was a current driven device. They would come on, but they would not blink off

Pete
Pete

I saw LEDs at autozone wednesday- I don't remember the model number or the bulb it replaced.
Robert

I tried a pair of 1157 replacement LED array "bulbs" from the local Schuck's/Kragen/Checker/Autozone/Pepboys store and was very underwhelmed by their output. Could have just been the brand I had chosen??

I see array/cluster lamp fixtures used on many commercial vehicles these days, but I am not certain that some of the larger ones are actually LEDs or simply bulb arrays. One advantage of any array is that when one of the lights goes out, the odds are against them all going out at the same time.

It might be worth a scan via Google to see just what lighting fixtures are available and also what types of "bulbs" may be out there???
Bob Muenchausen

Public Service Vehicles (i.e. buses) here in the UK mostly have LEDs for all the lights at the back, at least. They are all the same brightness, of course, so the tail-light uses just half-a-dozen or so of the elemnts of the array whereas the stop light uses the whole ('circular') array. They do seem much brighter in the day time, dunno if they can be dimmed for night time use, I would have thought they would be too bright especially in the wet. The other big advantage is they light up notoiceably faster than incandescents.
Paul Hunt

This thread was discussed between 08/05/2003 and 12/05/2003

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