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DRL/Highbeam LED Light Install

36K views 32 replies 17 participants last post by  litz 
You'll need to add resistors to prevent the error warning. Since LEDs create far less resistance than a factory filament bulb, the car's error warnings will interpret this as a bulb going out.

When filament bulbs go bad, they create less resistance. That's how you know it's time to change the bulb, and that's what triggers the warning light in most cases

A simple 6 ohm 50 watt resistor should do the trick, one on each side most likely

If that doesn't work, you may need to add capacitors

Nick C.
 
This does not really answer the question... I know the leds will draw around 7 watts but the fact that you use 50W resistors suggest that a similar amount of power will be used in the resistor thus cancelling any gains made from using Leds over the halogen bulbs. It would then be only a cosmetic upgrade which is totally fine but definitely not what I'm looking for.
The resistors we recommend are 6 ohm, so they draw 2 amps at 12 volts, and consume about 24W of power. Your factory bulb uses 26 watts so this is usually perfect. Resistors are rated for a power level based on the maximum power they can dissipate- that does not mean they will use that much power. If you up the voltage, they can consume up to 50W before they melt.

Yes, Current drawn will be proportional to the total resistance of the circuit. These LED manufacturers really need to just put their diodes in series instead of parallel in order to fix this problem without using an unnecessary power sink.
No one is putting LEDs in parallel. You're replacing the factory bulb with the LED, all in series on the circuit. Do you mean... leave the factory bulb in there? That would be the same as using a resistor- that's exactly what a resistor mimics, it's just much more reliable than leaving a random bulb hanging under your hood.

If you mean adding LEDs in series after changing out the bulb, that's really not a good solution. If you had enough LEDs in series to draw 26 watts, you'd generate just as much heat as with a resistor, requiring heatsinks to keep everything running. You'd end up with a huge unit of LEDs, and it would be much less reliable. You would basically just have ten more LED bulbs sitting under your hood. Resistors are used because they're cost-effective, relatively small, and very reliable. Stringing together a couple hundred LEDs just doesn't make any sense and would generate just as much heat as a resistor.

Believe me, if there was a miraculous easy solution, we'd be doing it. In the end, you have to draw current on the circuit, like your factory bulb did, and a resistor is the best way to do that.
 
There is one benefit and it is purely for cosmetic reasons. The light of a halogen, no matter which one you get will not be a "pure white" colour that can match the HID's on the car due to the lower voltage of the DRL. This is the reason why I purchased a set of LED's and am extremely happy with them. The only reason for the resistors is to get rid of the error on the MID.

Now my DRL's, with my turn signal switchbacks turned on, are very closely matched in colour.
We also have an LED replacement for that location that produces more output than the factory halogen bulb FWIW:



Our new XML2's produce 1,420 lumens, and will be a nice 6000K color

Nick C.
 
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