My clear sidemarker/bumper light lenses arrived yesterday as well as my LED clusters that I ordered. I know have converted all of my exterior bulbs to LEDs, except for the headlights of course.





The problem/issue:
When I was getting out of my car today when I arrived at work, I touched the brake pedal with my boot as I got out and the warning buzzer/beep sounded. The sound it makes when you leave the headlights on and the key is out? Yeah that sound. I thought that was weird and fiddled around with it for a bit before going in and could not determine why it was doing it. On my way home from work, I noticed that my stereo backlighting was flashing at me when I had the turn signal on. So the only thing that I have done to cause this (unless it was coincidence) was I replaced my front bumper lights and License plate lights with LEDs. Weird shit let me tell you.

The conclusion is this: The warning buzzer somehow sees that the resistance is much lower because of the sidemarker conversion to LED. Even with key off. The reaction? With the key out and the brake pedal depressed the warning buzzer sounds. With the car on? Touching the brake pedal or activating the turn signals/hazards causes the radio backlighting to light when anything is activated (the backlighting stays on as long as the pedal is down, or flashes when the turn signals flash). The instrument cluster and HVAC are unaffected. Only the radio lights. From the outside it looks as if I am turning the switch to the "parking lights" (the notch before full headlights). As I touch the brake, all four corners illuminate (not the front bumper lights though) and when I have a blinker on, it looks as if I am inside flipping the switch to parking lights, off, parking lights, off, parking lights, off....you get the picture.

I determined the sidemarkes as the cause by swapping the LED clusters out with #168s and repeating the procedure. Back to normal.

My question is: is this the cars way of telling the driver, "hey dumbass replace your bulbs!" ?? We all know that when the blinkers flash fast it means one is out or no flash means front and back are out. I have never encountered this before or even heard of this.

Anyone else done full LED conversion and had/not had this problem? Or is anyone really familiar with how the warning buzzer and radio are tied into this? I am really scratching my ehad on this one. My only solution to fix this is to wire in resistors in parallel with the two front bumper lights so the car thinks there are incandescent bulbs in there due to the higher current draw than it has with LEDs. But that defeats the benefit of having ultra low power draw with LEDs.

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2012 2500HD LML

Yea, go to just about any led sales web site and they will sell a LED load balancer. My favorite site is www.superbrightleds.com, on their site check out the 12V car bulbs section for the load balancer. Should take care of the problems.

BTW, how does the car look? I have been doing the conversion to my car but havent done the brake lights yet. How do yours look? What bulbs did you use?

Thanks

-Adam

'98 GS

That is where I got all of my LEDs from. For the rears I am using the 1157 Red clusters. They are not as bright during the day, but the color is purer since the LEDs are producing red light instead of having a clear bulb filtered by the red plasitc. They blink really nice as well since it is on/off (no bulb fade). I used the load resistors as well on the rears to get it to blink properly.

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2012 2500HD LML