Has anyone heard of LED bulbs causing the sockets to burn out ?
Went to A Zone to buy a couple for my 03' tails and the guy said they don't sell them for that reason, I asked are you sure since LED lights use such little juice and he said that was the reason.
I said I would have to go to my resource's at FTE and get a second opinion Or two.
What do you think about that one ? I think it was a answer personally.

 

Nope, that's garbage. There might have been some sort of manufacturing issue with a particular brand they once sold, but from an electrical standpoint, there's nothing about LED bulbs themselves that make this an issue of concern.

 

They may have quit selling them if they got tired of people bringing them back because they didn't work. On most vehicles, this is not a plug and play deal. You have to change the flasher unit and/or add load resistors to make them work. If they sold a "retro-fit kit" to install them with everything needed in the kit to make them work, they probably would have more success.

 

So by the sound of it... its not a good idea to just buy a couple tail light bulbs plug them in and call it a day and expect them to work?

Just curious, I put a set of LED trailer lights on my 78' and they seem to work O'K ... do you suppose these were designed to be a plug and play since the entire unit was sealed from the mfg r and designed for a trailer?
Any idea where I can purchase the bulbs and necessary components to install them in my 03' tails and just what these might be?
Thanks for the response's

 

Bare LEDs are not rated for 12 volts. The drop across LEDs is usually in the hundreds of millivolts. Instead you must put a resistor in series to drop the difference. However, I have seen LED bulbs that have the resistor built in, meaning the entire bulb is rated for 12 volts, but the LED inside the assembly is still on the order of hundreds of millivolts. You'd have to look at the packaging.

As Franklin2 pointed out, another issue is turn signals. Old can-style flashers are thermal flashers, meaning they open and close as a heating element inside heats up and cools down. The load current is what heats up the heating element; therefore the blink rate is proportional to the load. That's why the turn signals can blink too fast or too slow if a bulb is burnt out or the wrong bulb is used. LEDs do not draw enough current do heat up the flasher element, and the flasher must be replaced with an electronic flasher that doesn't rely on load current to flash.

 

Thanks again for the response's, I think I'll just keep my bulbs clean and call that a day. Sounds more complicated than I'm ready for... maybe at a later date.
I just wanted to spray Night Shade on the lens and was hoping to increase the lumen's with LED's unless someone has another suggestion.
Again, thanks

 

LED lights are usually plug and play for trailers, because you are leaving the original lights in the truck. The original incandescent lights in the truck are making the truck flasher work correctly, so the trailer lights are just added or piggybacked onto the trucks lights, so they work also.

As was said in a previous post, the led lights do not load down the vehicle's system enough to make it work correctly.