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Switched to led lights now my brake lights don?t work

rom

Active member
Joined
Oct 3, 2004
Location
With mintyfresh.
I switched to sylvania led taillight bulbs and now my taillights are super bright but only the third brake light gets brighter when i press the brake. Also, my brake lights work when the car is off and depressing the brake pedal also makes the gauge cluster lights turn on.

Anyone experience this one or am i stuck chasing down electrical gremlins?
 
LED in the Third Bake Light location will cause the bulb failure indicator to come on regardless of model. Either swap back incandescent or remove bulb failure light. Brake lights work when the car is off in my experience... unless you mean always on (gremlins). Did you get the correct dual function 1157 LED equivalent for the brake lights? 1156 won't cut it...
 
LED in the Third Bake Light location will cause the bulb failure indicator to come on regardless of model. Either swap back incandescent or remove bulb failure light. Brake lights work when the car is off in my experience... unless you mean always on (gremlins). Did you get the correct dual function 1157 LED equivalent for the brake lights? 1156 won't cut it...

yah. i got proper 1157's. the third brake light is incandescent still. or do you mean the third (empty in the us) panel of the lower red strip that is usually empty.

so the bulb failure indicator will cause the lights to not work? i hate that stupid thing anyway, i might as well get rid of it and see if that fixes it.

the weird thing about the brake lights working when the car is off is that they turn on the gauge cluster lights. that one is puzzling to me.
 
Yeah you got the gremlins... Third brake light with LED sets off the bulb sensor. Good luck.
 
Yeah you got the gremlins... Third brake light with LED sets off the bulb sensor. Good luck.

thanks. i bypassed the stupid bulb sensor so at least i don't have the stupid bulb out indicator light anymore.. brake lights still aren't working properly though. i'll try the old incandescent bulbs in the morning and see if that changes things, but i'm currently stumped. this is properly annoying, the bulbs look like they are stuck in the bright braking mode (they might just be really bright led's) so maybe i just have a short somewhere that i created when i was changing the bulb. i really should have pulled my car in the garage because now i'm working on this in the middle of a snowstorm i my driveway. :rofl:
 
after a tonne of trying to track down electrical problems. i figured out that it was one of the poopy aftermarket bulb holders that was shorting the brake and on positions because the little fingers were too wide and touching each other.
 
Good find. I went back to the old type bulbs after trying leds. They are nice but need a bit of work to really get a nice setup using these light housings in my experience.
 
Good find. I went back to the old type bulbs after trying leds. They are nice but need a bit of work to really get a nice setup using these light housings in my experience.

The sylvania zevo led?s are pretty fantastic. They fill the space with light without hotspots and that cheap led look. The only thing that makes it different for me is brightness obviously and a deeper red because i got red bulbs. I now have the bottom three on both aides lit and it?s got a properly bright glow to it. It?s very bright. When i get around to hard wiring and getting rid of those stupid flexible pcb?s, i?ll make all three into brake lights. I want my brakes to he offensively bright.
 
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