Connecting LED Tail Lights

[Dean_Me]

Ok so I have just bought a set of new LED tail lights for my 2000 Celica ZR. The casing is clear so the coloured lights will work differently to the stock lights.

After receiving them, I found out that the LED lights only seem to have one brightness (when I would need two, for tail lights and brake lights).

There are still the three bulb slots, so this is what I'm thinking at the moment:

• Blinker: 1st slot with yellow bulb
• Reverse: 2nd slot with white bulb
• Brake Lights: Ring of LEDs
• Tail Lights: Unknown :S

As far as I'm aware you can't buy red bulbs, so I don't know how I'm going to get tail lights. I still would have a spare bulb slot though.

Anyone else bought tail lights like these?
Or have any other ideas how I could set them up?

Thanks for any help


EDIT:
Ok I found out that you can actually buy red LED tail lights. So would buying these be the way to go? So my tail lights and brake lights would be separate.

[shorod]

What's the socket like for the brake lights? The bulb might have two power wires plus a ground. One wire goes through a larger current limiting resistor than the other. When the power is applied through the one terminal, the intensity of the red bulb is lower, but when the other wire is energized, more current is allowed to flow to the LEDs and they illuminate with higher intensity. Do you have a link to the tail lights you purchased, or did they come with directions?

-Rod

[RidingOnRailz]

Tried that once on a car not built for LEDs - doesn't work!

'96 Ford Mondeontour: slipped the LED into the socket - Ca Ca!

The car has to have had OEM LEDs before you can start customizing things. I.E. 2000 & up Caddilac DeVilles.

[shorod]

Originally Posted by SmoothHandler

Tried that once on a car not built for LEDs - doesn't work!

'96 Ford Mondeontour: slipped the LED into the socket - Ca Ca!

The car has to have had OEM LEDs before you can start customizing things. I.E. 2000 & up Caddilac DeVilles.

Not necessarily true. The load on the system may be different if the car didn't originally come with LEDs and you may need to add a load to get the turn signal flasher to flash at the correct rate. Many vehicles no longer use the bimetallic flasher, so you often can't just switch to an electronic flasher. Also, the polarity is critical when going to LED bulbs, they will usually only work in one orientation. I say usually because it is possibly to install a bridge rectifier set of diodes to correct for reverse polarity, but I doubt any of the bulbs do that. Instead, if the bulbs don't work one way, rotate them 180 degrees in the socket. Brake and parking lights should work just fine if you have the orientation correct, turn signals will likely flash at the wrong rate. LED back up lights are not very practical because the beam will be very narrow, not really what you want when backing down a narrow driveway at night.

What didn't work when you tried the conversion, SmoothHandler?

-Rod

[Dean_Me]

Thanks for replies.

I've found out a lot more since my first post.
The sockets are 7443 for blinker, 7440 for stop/tail and 921 for reverse.
So I went on eBay and bought coloured LED lights for all of those socket types.

And yeh I hoped that one of the wires would be for tail, one for stop and the ground would be through one of the screws at the back. I tested all the screws and no current would flow

Oh yeh and this is the description of the lights

So the only problem with the different loads will be that the indicator will flash at a different rate? That's strange, I didn't expect that. Would it be slower?

I'd also like to know why it didn't work for you Smoothhandler?

[shorod]

So they sell these as LED taillights (actually 'headlights' in the description) but they don't come with LEDs? The picture would suggest there is a ring of discrete LEDs already, so I would expect some wiring harness to be part of the assembly. It's too bad there aren't a few more photos, I can't give you many ideas with the limited description of that eBay ad. So do you need to splice in to the factory wiring or how are these supposed to wire up to the car?

Without the proper load, the turns signals will probably flash more rapidly than normal.

-Rod