You can just swap them. The only time you really have an issue is places where dimming them is required. No dimming required with taillights/directionals. Although, you may need a load equalizer to make the directionals blink at the proper rate.

LED light.com has all kinds of automotive bulbs to choose from.

 

My experience with led tail or fog lights is that they simple are not as bright as you would think. The ones they sell at AutoZone seem to only shine light in a beam so you end up with a slightly dim circle as a tail light. A regular bulb worked a lot better for me. If you get something like a 1,3,5 watt led it might work better i'm not sure.

 

ok, thanks guys. do you know what kind of connector there are in the sockets for a c900 taillights fixture, mini bayonet, screw in, wedge? I could just look, but I would like a price quote. For now...... Thanks

 

I have LEDs in the tails and if you get the ones with a lot of them, they are plenty bright enough. I got bigger ones for the outside and smaller for the middle.

Classic Saab 900 SPG with LED tail lights

 

Those still look like circles in the tail lights. They just don't fill out the light as say codesplice's do.

 

Unfortunately one of the bulbs burnt out so I reinstalled the stock bulbs, but they work great in the license plate light fixtures:

 

Have a write-up, or tutorial on this Christian?? My license bulb brackets/leads seem to have a short. Want to do this.

 

maybe I'll just put them in my licence plate illuminator fixture.

 

Leds bulbs are great, I have them in my miata soon to be in the saab. They draw less amps and volts so there is less strane on the alternator and the bulbs last longer. Right now Led bulbs are not any brighter then incandescent ones, but the are more directional and the light is cleaner. The more Led lights on the bulb the more light. Led bulbs should be the same color of the lense to work the best. A white bulb amits every color of light and a red lense will block the red light from a white bulb. If you change your flashers to LED bulbs you will have to change your relay to a low amp relay because the Led bulbs do not use enough amps to trip the relay. Go to www.superbrightleds.com they have everything you need to know about Led bulbs and what goes on your car . Almost for got get the wide beem ones for tails, brake, back up and turning. The narrow beems are good for licence plate and interior lights.

 

The only extra work needed is if you replace the indicator lamps with LED versions as the standard flasher relay depends on the current draw of the standard filament lamps to set the flashing rate. There are two ways to deal with this - either fit 'ballast' resistors to the indicator circuits so that the resistors draw the same current as the filament lamps being replaced, or replace the actual flasher relay with one designed to work with LED lamps. I've covered the topic here.

Pick the lamps carefully. I started using LED lamps in my classic 900's about 5 or so years ago and had some good success with the early product that I source from UltraLED's in the UK. There is now a lot of low-quality LED lamp product on Ebay that's made in China so it's worth evaluating the quality before committing to doing a wholesale replacement of as many lamps as possible with LED versions.

I've had a number of lamp failures. One has been quite serious (read the bit about the failed LED 'festoon' lamp on my web page linked above), but all have been breakdowns of the control circuit in the lamps so that some or all of the LED's in an individual lamp flicker or give intermittent output. Just recently I noticed the original white dual-contact LED lamps I have in my 89 900i hatchback which were originally in my 83 900s sedan have started giving that flickering/intermittency problem so they need to be replaced.

The only lamps you can't replace with LED's are the headlight bulbs, and the charging lamp in the instrument cluster. All the others can be replaced but th very small 286 type used for switch lighting, etc. can be annoying if they are not made with 'indents' in the metal contacts that hold the lamps in place with the spring fingers in the various small lamp holders.

Here is what you're aiming for in terms of lighting output with good quality replacement BA15 type lamps:

flickr page

Craig.

 

thanks both of you guys, this will really help!!