Converting to LED lamps - October 26th 2017 4:56 pm
Hello-
Has anyone attempted to implement the newer LED bulbs in their older model vans? I have an '82 Dodge Maxi and was able to swap out the side marker lamps and backup lamps to LED successfully. However, the tail lamps/turn signal lamps (1157 bulbs--have dual filaments and the two contacts on the bottom) will not work with the LED replacements I ordered. After poking around a bit online, there was mention that there are two issues:
1) that the relay needs a sufficient load on it in order to heat up the bendable filament inside in order to break the circuit on and off to produce the flashing. There are solid state relays out there, but they have four terminals as opposed to the two that the stock relays have. I am not sure how you would need to wire something like this up exactly.
2) when only one of the filaments in the bulb are on (running light mode) one of the contacts on the bulb has 12 volts going to it but the other switches to ground. This works for the regular incandescent bulbs, but due to the electronic nature of the LED bulbs, it does not. The outer casing of course is always ground. It was mentioned that you could solder in a diode (one of a 5 amp rating was suggested in case you go bad to incandescent bulbs--which draw more power) on each of the power leads going to the lamp (silver stripe on the diode faces in the direction of the bulb). This prevents the power from going back the other way when the other contact switches to ground.
Anyway, this annoying problem is getting pretty complicated. Probably just going to go back to regular bulbs, but I did like how much brighter the LED ones were plus they draw a whole lot less power, last practically forever and look better. Just wanted to open up this discussion to see if anyone has tried anything to get these to work. Thanks for reading!
Has anyone attempted to implement the newer LED bulbs in their older model vans? I have an '82 Dodge Maxi and was able to swap out the side marker lamps and backup lamps to LED successfully. However, the tail lamps/turn signal lamps (1157 bulbs--have dual filaments and the two contacts on the bottom) will not work with the LED replacements I ordered. After poking around a bit online, there was mention that there are two issues:
1) that the relay needs a sufficient load on it in order to heat up the bendable filament inside in order to break the circuit on and off to produce the flashing. There are solid state relays out there, but they have four terminals as opposed to the two that the stock relays have. I am not sure how you would need to wire something like this up exactly.
2) when only one of the filaments in the bulb are on (running light mode) one of the contacts on the bulb has 12 volts going to it but the other switches to ground. This works for the regular incandescent bulbs, but due to the electronic nature of the LED bulbs, it does not. The outer casing of course is always ground. It was mentioned that you could solder in a diode (one of a 5 amp rating was suggested in case you go bad to incandescent bulbs--which draw more power) on each of the power leads going to the lamp (silver stripe on the diode faces in the direction of the bulb). This prevents the power from going back the other way when the other contact switches to ground.
Anyway, this annoying problem is getting pretty complicated. Probably just going to go back to regular bulbs, but I did like how much brighter the LED ones were plus they draw a whole lot less power, last practically forever and look better. Just wanted to open up this discussion to see if anyone has tried anything to get these to work. Thanks for reading!