I hate standard amber incandescent bulbs. The look dated, and the light output for the most part is rubbish.
This might explain why I tend to replace as many bulbs as i can with LED bulbs, and the NC is no different.
Today’s mission was to change the rear plate lights, trunk/boot light, and front park lights. I wanted to do the interior one too but it turns out i’m lacking the correct bulb.
I started with the boot/trunk light. I did this on the Fit and the difference it made was amazing, the standard bulbs are just so bloody dim it makes it useless in the dark.
Dim and yellow
Stick your trim removal tool into the little slot in the end and lever the light out.
Now, ive gained a rather decent collection of LED bulbs over the years but this seems to be the one size i’ve run out of. 31mm festoon. In this case i decided to use one of the universal COB setups i had. I might change this to a proper 31mm LED when they arrive.
It works well for now though, nice bright and white.
Next up was the number plate lights. These are a pain, and to be honest i broke one of mine and will have to buy a new housing now. The are designed to be squeezed across and then they will come out. Unfortunately one of mine was too brittle and the clip cracked. Oh well, the same thing happened to one of the ones on the Fit too (same design).
Once I had done that (and for now covered the hole in the boot with tape until i can get a new housing >_< ) i moved onto the front park lights.
I had expected these to be a real pain because there isn’t a lot of room right in the front, but Mazda had actually been super awesome and designed extended bulb holders with little wings to help you twist them. I started with the harder of the two, the LH side and that only took me a minute or two to do, and then the RH side was a matter of seconds.
The new LED park lights work much much better with the colour of the HID bulbs.
So thats that. I still have the interior bulb to do but i believe that’s a 31mm festoon, and i’m waiting for a couple of packs of them to arrive. I’ll update with that one when they arrive.
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Brighter LED globes sound great on my NC.
From what I’ve seen for sale, the old “55w low or 65w high beam” requires an LED conversion and it seems some cars require a Canbus (whatever that is) .
So did you change low, high and fogs to LED?
Which globes (lumins and colour) did you get and were there any issues with fit or the computer?
Hi, I didnt change the headlight main/high beam bulbs as this car was fitted with factory Xenon/HID lights. I only changed the interior, park and number plate lamps.