arexeight

iTrader: (1)

OK, I'm gonna ask.

Do all these LED brake lights make some dash idiot-light say "one of your bulbs is burned out"? Or, do you fool the system with a resistor across the circuit to pretend to be an incandescent electrical load? I can't believe that the RX8 is too numb to notice a burned-out brake light bulb. What's the secret?

I have tried LED tail/brake lights on a number of cars. For brake lights, some cars get fussy. I even had the ABS light on my minivan kick on when I went all-digital tail lights.

D MENAC 7

Here are a couple of photos that I took tonight to compare the reverse light with the 7440 15 array LEDs vs. the chromed style incadescent. Also a brightness comparison of the stop/tail lamp 15 array LEDs and the standard clear incadescent in the third brake light. Also I will include the tail lights lit.

D MENAC 7

It's very clear that the 15 LED array is far superior to the 9 LED 7443 of before in both the red and white cases. I have ordered the other white 15 array LED to replace the right side revers light. Now maybe I can see backing up with my tinted windows. :D

I also am including two other pics of the front of my car with the LED lighting there. These are the 7 LED running and corner 194s. Looks kind of like a UFO. :D

All of the preceding pictures were taken without any adjustments to the camera except I used a spot meter setting and set this on the light so it wouldn't be too overexposed. That is why the rest of the pic is black. When taking a pic at night of light, it is either black like this or over exposed because of the lighting difference.

D MENAC 7

The brake/tail light has no effect. I have had the 9 LED versions on mine for months now. I just upgraded them to the 15 LED versions. They act like a normal 7743 in every way.

However, the blinkers (turn Signals) did react differently and I suspect they did so because the system thought the lamp was burned out and therw wasn't enough resistance. But, I only used one lamp as a test and with this lamp plugged in or not, the turn signals blinked fast both ways. I am going to eventually run the test with all 4 turn signals replaced with LEDs to see if it makes any difference. I suspect it won't but don't know if the absence of a mixture of the two will make up the difference. I might be able to do it with just two on the same side since it would be testing two different circuits. I will, of course, report back to the findings.

arexeight

iTrader: (1)

http://superlumination.com/equalizers.htm

Regarding the "turn signals blinked fast both ways" the above link has a resistor approach to putting things back as intended. I have not tried this product, but it does make sense.

takahashi

Any news on the blinkers Dennis?

D MENAC 7

No, I have been too busy and too broke working on the other projects I am doing. I still need to purchase 3 more amber 15 LEDs and another white for the other reverse. It will be a week before I ordder them.

Argento Otto

Did you get any warning lights display on the dash when you replaced your 3rd brake light?

Namely the ABS/DCS warning lights?

I was wondering because I get those warnings, but after replacing the 3rd brake light with a normal incandescent the warning lights go away.

Tamas

iTrader: (1)

Yes, that's correct - I had the same issue. Strangely, my ABS/DSC light did not illuminate immediately after the swap, just days later, so I did not make the connection between the LED bulbs and the warning. If you want to go with LEDs for the brake lights, you must leave at least one incandescent bulb in there (preferably the third brake light to keep things balanced) to prevent the ABS/DSC light from illuminating.

I AM THE RED WORM

Have you guys seen this?

Argento Otto

^^^
Haven't seen that before... is that custom or is someone making that for the 8?


I was thinking of just adding a single load balancer for just that light, but I don't know what ohm rating I should use for just a single bulb (?)

Any electronic people out there know...?

Tamas

iTrader: (1)

No, I have not. It looks good - but I don't think this would help the issue since those are also LED's and they have far less resistance than the regular bulbs. The problem apparently is that the ABS system expects some load on the circuit (that the one incandescent bulb provides), otherwise it thinks there's a problem with the brake system. Pretty dumb design if you ask me...

Tamas

iTrader: (1)

I suppose the load balancer that autolumination (and probably other vendors) sell for just one LED turn signal would work fine for this purpose.

Argento Otto

I think I've got an extra balancer lying around... I'll give that a shot this weekend.

CyprusRX8

I have been reading this post and I have found it very interesting! I would love to make my brake lights into LEDs.

However, sorry if I am being a little ignorrant, but if I want to change my brake lights from a bulb to LEDs all I have to do is to order the 7743 15 led bulbs in red color and exchage them with the conentional brake bulbs without the need of any modification to the conectors? Is it that simple as replacing a normal brake bulb?

Thanks guys.

Tamas

iTrader: (1)

Yes.

Argento Otto

So I replaced the 3rd brake/high-mount brake light with an LED and spliced in a single 6 ohm load balancer. Voila! No more ABS/DSC warning lights on the instrument panel now. Yay!

But now my left LED blinker (with balancer installed) has gone back to fast-blink-mode...

I think I might have loosened that splice when I added the new load balancer for the 3rd brake light. I'll check it out again...

CyprusRX8

Thank you very much Tamas!

ndtechie09

Ordered my super whites last week, still havent gotten em yet im waiting on those and the clear corners.