LED taillight bulbs. Good or bad? Options

[GTMike]

On the surface, LED taillight bulbs from eBay look good (as good as cheap ebay stuff can be that is). However in the fine print, they say that load resistors may be needed. What has your experience been?

I am looking at possibly adding some tint to my taillights and use super-bright red, amber and white LED lamps to make up the difference.

[eMrock32]

You need them so your car doesn't have hyperflash. Hyperflash is like when you have a bulb out, your car tells you by flashing that side quicker than usual. It's the way the flasher relay is designed that that happens. Newer cars do not need them depending on the model, since they have body control modules. You need either load resistors, or a led flasher relay. I'd also recommend superbrightleds.com you can enter your model and get exactly what you need. They also show both the resistors and relays you can purchase. Mine came hella quick. They also have good customer service.

Relays I figure are easier since the one is only 10$ instead of 2-3 each light, and no tools required to wire them in. That's why I went with it.

[sandusky1977]

You need them so your car doesn't have hyperflash. Hyperflash is like when you have a bulb out, your car tells you by flashing that side quicker than usual. It's the way the flasher relay is designed that that happens. Newer cars do not need them depending on the model, since they have body control modules. You need either load resistors, or a led flasher relay. I'd also recommend superbrightleds.com you can enter your model and get exactly what you need. They also show both the resistors and relays you can purchase. Mine came hella quick. They also have good customer service.

Relays I figure are easier since the one is only 10$ instead of 2-3 each light, and no tools required to wire them in. That's why I went with it.

I'd like to see the result and maybe inserted in this conversion. Take pics...

[Tigawoods]

right are LED's

[eMrock32]

Pictures do not do it justice. I never thought I'd drop the 20$ on bulbs just for my cluster when I saw the pics. Got my tax return back and splurged a little. Now I'm kicking myself for not doing it sooner. It looks cool, its brighter, they last longer, and they modernize your car.

IMO they are worth the money.

[richee3]

Do this instead.

http://www.6gc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=54697&hl=

[RoadRage]

I'm more interested in having something like this



This post has been edited by RoadRage: Feb 19, 2014 - 10:28 PM

[eMrock32]

You can do just about anything you want. But to answer your question, you will still need some type of load to prevent hyperflash. Not sure if some LED's come with them built in.

[The_enD]

Split the wire, connect the old bulb, hide it, no need to spend extra money on loaders and relays. Ghetto, but works.

[GTMike]

I checked superbrightleds.com and it looks like I need can-bus bulbs. Designed to not need loaders or relays. $20/bulb on the site. Two for $16.00 on ebay.

[eMrock32]

No, not the CAN bulbs. Go one under that. I didn't use those in mine and they were like 5$ something per bulb. And you Dont have to wait 7 weeks for them to get to your door from China.

[wolfie308]

I believe you only need to use the expensive CAN type bulbs if they're being used in a circuit which has a 'bulb fail' warning lamp or something similar.

Good example of this is the 3rd brake light. On some model/year/markets(GT4's in particular) which have this function, if you fit a regular LED bulb/strip, the brake light fail lamp on the dash will light. Another ghetto solution to this is to just remove the bulb from the dash!

[eMrock32]

Ah. I guess that was in my friends Camry. My celica didn't have it and I had no problem with mine. You can pop the bulb out from the dash when doing led cluster mod