One of the projects I have been working on, was to replace all the 3157 bulbs with LEDs. It has been a very interesting process.
My first requirement for the upgrade, was that they had to be brighter than stock.
The second was that everything still had to work.
The third was that it should look better than stock.

I have only achieved 1.5 out of 3.

To meet the first requirement, I was able to find 10 watt red LEDs for the back lights from Autolumination. Stock 3157 bulbs put out around 150/400 lumens, according to Autolumination, these are 200/600 lumens.

I bought 6 of these at $30ea.

The first time I installed these, I was very impresses by how bright they were. They are noticibly brighter, and still have a uniform light quality that seems to get lost when using the bulbs that have 30-120 LEDs on them (BTW the 120 LED bulbs put out 200/500 lumens).

For the Front, I purchased 2 - 60LED Switchback bulbs (ebay- $9ea).

and 2 - 44LED 3156 bulbs (Autolumination - $17).

The Switchback has 30 white LEDs and 30 amber. The amber only turn on when your signal is activated, the white stay on all the time.
The 44LED 3156 bulbs were chosen for two reasons. Because they are driving lights only, I went with a 3156 bulb that would be full bright all the time, unlike most 3157 bulbs. Secondly, They are shorter than most of the bulbs, only 42mm tall. Because of the squarer profile of a LED bulb, it is harder to get into a tight spot. All the other LEDs were between 52mm and 59mm and I could not squeeze the around the speaker volume box to get them in.

Now, with all the bulbs in place, here are the problems I found;

Cruise control will not work.
Turn signals will not blink at all.

What I found was that the cruise control must have some resistance all the time coming from the brakes in order for it to work, so I pulled the middle LEDs out and replaced them with stock bulbs. . . for now.

Kinda the same for the turn signals. The driving lights worked fine, and looked awsome. When you engage the turn signal, all you get is a nasty buzz from under the center dash. The two bulbs I bought off ebay came with two 6 ohm resistors that were to be tapped into the turning circuit to simulate a regular bulb.

I installed these and now the blinkers work, but at a very fast rate. The computer is looking for two bulbs on each turn circuit and the resistors only make up for one. If I want a regular flash rate, I will need to add another 6 ohm resistor to each circuit or replace those with 3ohm resistors. I went ahead and purchased a single load equalizer ($17) from Victoryonly.com that was supposed to simulate front and rear blinkers for both left and right.


With this installed, I was still getting the fast blinking rate though. So I pulled the switchback bulbs and put the stock white ones back in. I wasn't really happy with how they looked anyhow, the amber seemed to get lost in the white.

The old 6 ohm resistors were recycled, and I used one on the braking circuit. This solved the cruise control problem and I was able to put the middle LEDs back in. It also let me put in a 'Back Off' module to blink the brakes 4x fast everytime you engage them. I had tried to install that in the past and had run into the same cruise control problems.

One of the bulbs at Autolumination caught my eye, they have a 60/60 switchback bulb ($30ea) with 60LEDs that show white, then all 60 change to amber when you engage the blinkers. You can order these so that they will alternate white/amber or so that they will be off between blinking amber, then return to white running lights when disengaged. I got them so they turn off between blinks.

New problem. . . Radio reception got 10x worse!, You can actually hear the blinkers thru the radio.
The new 60/60 switchbacks were also much brighter than the 3156s and it kinda looked funny.

So for now, I have pulled the front LEDs and put the stock white incandescents back in. This solved the flash rate problem and the radio problem.

So at this point I am looking for suggestions..

I think I will put the 3156s back in, I don't think they were the radio problem. I am also going to put the original switchbacks back in if I can get the flash rate back to normal. I'm hopeing at the normal rate, the amber will not get lost as much in the white. I have a feeling that the electronics in the 60/60 bulb that tells it when to cut in and out, is what causes the interference with the radio.
I will also be contacting Victoryonly and finding out why their load equalizer only worked on half and not all.

I do also want to mention that my setup is for a bike with clear front lenses and red rear lenses. If you have Amber front lenses and are wanting to do this, buy only amber LEDs. Any white will be filtered in amber by the lenses and considerable light will be lost. If you have clear rear lenses, you may opt for a turn signal bulb that blinks red/amber, however it will not be as bright as the 10 watt brakelight LEDs.