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Hello all. I'm pulling the back lenses on the '77 to clean and polish them, so I figured I'd change all the bulbs at the same time. The PO decided to tint the rear window nearly as black as the cars paint job, so it's really hard to see when backing up at night.
Can I put in bulbs that are brighter than the stock bulbs? (I don't want to go LED.) Would the heat of higher watt bulbs melt the lens plastic?
Thx!
EDIT - I have the factory 2 brake, 2 reverse light setup.
Maybe just LEDs for the backup lights? You can get a lot more Lumens without a lot of heat that way, especially if you keep the stock light arrangement. You won't see the LEDs when you are driving or parked, and you might see better when backing up.
Some members are adding off-the-shelf short LED "bars" in the area around their license plate hwere they are not noticeable.....then they connect them to the reverse light wires at the rear of the car to provide increased rear vison when backing up.
As for the highly tinted rear window, you may have to replace it with less tint....I owned a car with dark tint and it wasn't safe to back the car most of the time for lack of visibility.
Honestly, LED's are the way to go. Brighter with less power draw. I am using the Philips 1157 P21/5W and you can't tell that they aren't regular bulbs.
Thanks for the replies. Sounds like my choices are either LED or stock bulbs. Kinda what I figured but wanted to make sure. I'll look into changing to LEDs, but for right now I'll just work on the lenses and replace the one reverse bulb that's out.
As for the rear window, ho boy, the PO stuck that thing in there with so much glue (or whatever) that I took one look at it and said - damn I hope I never need to take that thing out! I guess I can pull the tinting off the window, but that sounds more like a winter/non-driving season project.