Few years back I got a stash of LED bulbs Ive built up, T10 wedge base and BA9S sockets and even some festoon bulbs as well as more traditional 1156 and 1157 bulbs.

I installed some white BA9S socketed LED bulbs in my old 56 few years back and I was never too happy with how it came out.  Yes they are bright, but for me the color was a pure white and just didn't look right to me.

Old photo of the super white LEDs at full brightness


and photos I took today first one warm white LED which was a pita to locate in BA9S, this one is at full brightness.



and at full dim.



The warm white I think looks more like incandescent bulbs just brighter.

Only thing left for me to do is do some digging find out where the bulb is for the radio and what kind of bulb it takes so I can get all lights working on my dash.

For those curious I recommend getting your LED bulbs from ebay.  I buy bulk from china where possible you might get 1 or 2 bulbs that just wont light up but shoot them an email and they will typically send you replacements for the ones that don't work.

Just be warned the warm white are a bit harder to find and cant find them in bulk especially in the BA9S base that these cars use for the dash lights.  But Ive been running these style LEDs in my vehicles for years and the worse I had was had to pull two bulbs out in the first two years they didn't stop working but a couple of the chips started to ficker randomly.

Another bit of advice for those deciding to run LED, if you run dash lights in LED do not cheap out on the single smd chip go for the five smd chip which has four smd chips around the sides and one facing outwards to give you 360* illumination it prevents hot spotting when it comes to the LED lights.


1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan - 292 Y8 - Ford-O-Matic - 155,000 mi

I have used the LED's mentioned ( 5 around, one on top) in my 54 Ford and all I can say is WOW.  I did not use the soft white but very happy with the bright ones.  Got them on ebay.


54 Victoria 312;  48 Ford Conv 302, 56 Bird 312
Forever Ford
Midland Park, NJ

Ebay is the best place to get them especially if you don't need them quickly and just buy them via bulk from china.  They are the same ones sold to you in smaller packages of 5 from sellers based in California.


1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan - 292 Y8 - Ford-O-Matic - 155,000 mi

To my eyes the super white LED in the pic look better. Very crisp appearance.

I agree the Super White do look crisp and have a great look.  Just for me in this case I am trying to hide the fact LED`s are being used by trying to mimic incandescent bulbs color wise.

Its sort of like my old Ford truck, I popped the blue color filters out and installed blue LEDs to get the right color and brightness but it still looks stock.  Even had a few old timers over on the Ford-Truck forums state how they remember these trucks like me with dash lights just like mine when new that the LEDs actually provided a convincing stock look.

For me I would run regular bulbs but being in a big city, regular bulbs get washed out so easily by street lights so I have a preference towards LEDs for their brightness.


1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan - 292 Y8 - Ford-O-Matic - 155,000 mi