Interior LED bulbs 921 and 194

901-Memphis

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I am looking at replacing some interior bulbs on my 2002 Buick Century with led bulbs. My family is always leaving the bulbs on "accidentally" and i am hoping to partially negate some of the power consumption when it does happen.

This car has tons of light bulbs, but the ones I am most concerned with are the two on the rearview mirror and the two in the back passenger compartment that can be manually turned on and forgotten to be turned off. I am having trouble finding out which bulb is which but looking on rockauto i am seeing part numbers of 194 and 921 available. I am also un sure of what the best quality stuff is. Hopefully something available on Amazon or with USA shipping?

I pulled the front mirror lights to inspect them and there are no marking but they appear to be 194 based on the shape comparing to rockauto. The rear are a pain to take out with the plastic thick lens, so i haven't even gotten the bulbs out to check the part number yet. If anyone can confirm the rear passenger interior bulbs i would be thankful.
 

JoeRodge

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

I'm pretty darn sure it's gonna be a 194. I bought some Eiko brand 2 pack at batteries plus for like 10.99. while a bit pricey I was really really satisfied with the brightness and color temperature. It's a gorgeous 5000k. Use them(194 Eiko) in my map lights, on my license plate, glovebox and my running lights.

The two in my map lights light up my entire car. Think they are About 60 lumens each or so.

Edit:

My entire point: I have a database I can check when I get to work tomorrow.
 
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lumen aeternum

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

Went to Pep Boys & asked about that but clerk is dumb(edit); pointed me to a rack of bulbs. Could not find a 194 in LED.
 
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Alaric Darconville

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

The Sylvania Zevo line includes white versions of 168, 194 (probably what your rear-view mirror's lights use), and 921.

Your owner's manual may tell you what bulb is in those reading lights in the back of the car (I assume they're reading lights of some kind if they have individual switches). Probably 194s also.
 

-Virgil-

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

Lots of 194s in an '02 Century interior. 194 (dimmer) and 168 (brighter) are physically identical. For LEDs the good ones come from Sylvania, their more expensive "Zevo" line. You can get cold white, amber and red.

906 for the map and dome lights. 920 for the trunk light. All of these can use this one, much brighter than original.
 

Alaric Darconville

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

All of these can use this one, much brighter than original.
A special note about that one, for those who might be inclined to use that 921 replacement in a CHMSL: Don't.

The CCT of "up to" 6000K means it's heavy on blue and light on red/orange/yellow. It doesn't work behind a red lens very well, leading to a strange pink light well outside the definition of red, meaning it won't convey a "stop" message properly.
 

-Virgil-

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

Alaric is right (again): you have to be a lot more conservative and skeptical about replacing exterior bulbs with LEDs, and a cold white, anything higher than about 3500K, will not even come close to working safely in a red-lens application, no matter what its light distribution is like.
 

jzchen

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Sylvania and Philips both have pretty good online application guides/bulb finders.

I'll let the mods decide whether they want the pages linked or not....
 

Alaric Darconville

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Sylvania and Philips both have pretty good online application guides/bulb finders.
I don't bookmark those because I've had the bookmark go stale after sites were redesigned. "sylvania bulb replacement guide" or "philips automotive bulb look-up" are my search terms (and am careful to never click the "Sponsored" match from Google. I *hate* when people click the "Sponsored" results in a Google search). Either one should work pretty well, but they may have gaps in coverage of the newest car models. And for older cars (like in the '60s) they might just say "compare to original".

Obviously they're going to want to sell you a hyped-up bulb (like Sylvania is really eager to try to get you to buy their zXe bulbs). I use them to find the bulb type, and then select best bulb I can get of that type.

And when they suggest LEDs, they can get that majorly wrong. For example, for my '01 Corolla's CHMSL, they list the Zevo 921 LED. That product's packaging even states "for use behind a clear lens" and the bulb base is labelled 6000K, making it very wrong for a CHMSL. Don't conflate a physical and electrical fit for suitability.
 
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idleprocess

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

A special note about that one, for those who might be inclined to use that 921 replacement in a CHMSL: Don't.

The CCT of "up to" 6000K means it's heavy on blue and light on red/orange/yellow. It doesn't work behind a red lens very well, leading to a strange pink light well outside the definition of red, meaning it won't convey a "stop" message properly.

White LED behind a red filter is an exercise in failure unless you also need to discard some 95% of apparent flux in the process for some reason.
 

Alaric Darconville

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

White LED behind a red filter is an exercise in failure unless you also need to discard some 95% of apparent flux in the process for some reason.

No. White incandescent bulbs with approximately the same luminous flux as the white LEDs behind red lenses work well. It's not that the LED is white, it's that in some cases those white LEDs have an abysmal dearth of red/orange/yellow.
 

-Virgil-

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

White LED behind a red filter is an exercise in failure unless you also need to discard some 95% of apparent flux in the process for some reason.

That's not necessarily so. It totally depends on the output characteristics (SPD, spectral power distribution) of the white LED. These, for example, use white LEDs behind red and amber lenses, and their performance and efficiency are both very good.
 

idleprocess

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

No. White incandescent bulbs with approximately the same luminous flux as the white LEDs behind red lenses work well. It's not that the LED is white, it's that in some cases those white LEDs have an abysmal dearth of red/orange/yellow.
I didn't say a thing about incandescents behind a red filter; indeed they've been working well in that function for many decades - because of their abundance of red spectrum. I've seen many a cheap LED flashlight offered with red/blue filters; the former stepping the output of a ~1W LED at full power down to worse than the 5mm keychain lights of 10+ years ago.

That's not necessarily so. It totally depends on the output characteristics (SPD, spectral power distribution) of the white LED. These, for example, use white LEDs behind red and amber lenses, and their performance and efficiency are both very good.
Low-CRI >5000K LEDs dominate the automotive LED lamp world to the point that I'd only recommend very specific models with known-adequate red/amber/yellow output.
 

Alaric Darconville

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Re: Interior Led bulbs 921 and 194

I didn't say a thing about incandescents behind a red filter; indeed they've been working well in that function for many decades - because of their abundance of red spectrum.
No, you didn't, but it was pertinent because incandescent bulbs behind a filter (any filter, whether red, green, orange, blue) mean throwing away a lot of light. You argue against using white LEDs because you're discarding light, but that's what we do with white incandescent bulbs all the time. Would it make more sense to use a specific chemistry LED to produce only the wavelength desired? In some cases it can, but as -Virgil- has pointed out, white LEDs are used in Peterson's LumenX line to excellent effect.

Low-CRI >5000K LEDs dominate the automotive LED lamp world to the point that I'd only recommend very specific models with known-adequate red/amber/yellow output.
And there are plenty of white LEDs with a good SPD (Spectral power distribution being key, not CCT or CRI) that can be used behind any color lens.
 
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