wow that's pretty catastrophic!
how many amps are they pulling?!
you could always run wiring for them through a small relay to be safe, but the copper track just isn't up to the job

You're not kidding!!!!!

I've just had a look at the EPC and the rating for the standard 501 capless is 12v 3.4w, I have no idea of the current draw unfortunately, I'm not sure how I can check either

I did do a restiance reading of the LED vs. standard bulb, LED = 119, standard bulb = 005!!!!!

I have also had a reply to my message to the vendor on ebay, it goes....

Dear andym323,

Thanks for your mail,maybe your car's current is too big so that the blub burn out ,as for this case ,how about we refund to you as our sincere apology ?Waiting for your reply.
If you have any problems, please feel free to get in touch with us , we will do our best to solve it for you.Best Wishes
- bgood2010

I think he doth get the wrong endeth of the stick, the LEDs are fine, its the car thats not

If anyone knows any figures for the currents, amps, wattage and resistance of any of this, feel free to chip in

Blimey, that's a bit extreme You could cheat and just measure the resistance of one bulb, count how many bulbs there are in the illuminating circuit (3?) and then multiply by 3 although wait... are they in parallel or series? If it's series, just multiply by 3. If it's in parallel, divide it by 3.

Get a resistor of that value (or the series value, whichever it is) and put that inline with the LEDs (should be able to cut the ILL wire on the loom in the car and add the resistor inline!)

When resistors are in series, their resistance can just be added up. When added in parallel, their conductivity is added up (conductivity is 1 divided by resistance). So each resistor has conductivity of 1/R. Multiply that by the amount you have (in this case 3) to get 3/R. That's your total conductivity of 3 resistors in parallel. To turn that back into resistance, you flip the fraction again and you're left with R/3 I loved physics, though whether I was any good at it or not...

As far as current flow goes - remember from school? the magic triangle - V = IR
I = V/R
V -> voltage
I -> current
R -> resistance

standard bulb: 12/119 = 0.1 amps
LED: 12/5 = 2.4 amps

EDIT: resistors!

If the bulbs are in series (and there are 3 of them) you need 3*119 ohms total resistance (357 ohms). You'd currently have 15 ohms with 3 LEDs, so you need a 342 ohm resistor. Or something close to that.

If the bulbs are in parallel (and again, there are 3 of them), you need 40 ohms total resistance. You'd currently have 1.67 ohms with 3 LEDs, so you'd need a 38.33 ohm resistor

I think I've got that right, I'm quite sleepy Sloth would know!

If you've got a multimeter Andy, could you read the current draw of a single 501 LED?

I suppose those 501 LEDs do put out quite a bit more light than the little incandescents, so it could be pulling legitimately more power Checking one out should answer that

Ohh shit,, Im aboug to fit these leds also to my clocks.
Said that I have blue leds fitted in the 1.5 but they are not smd's and they are fine.

Hughie, have you reversed the readings from Andy's post?

I have actually yes, sorry my bad! Like I said, I was sleepy

Thanks for all the responses guys

Lerch and I had another look Sunday, I've replaced the PCB with a spare I had and some odd white LEDs I had lying about so at least I'm not staring at a black hole while I'm driving at night!

However, the spare PCB is from a post ford so the dimmer switch doesn't work and there is no 8.2 ohm resistor for the washer warning light and the LEDs I found in my goodies bag are pretty crap!!!

Just ordered some of the concave single LEDs that Stu suggested which should be here Thursday

I'll be asking the vendor of the canbus LEDs for a contribution to a new PCB!!!!!!!

We did a resistance comparison with the spare LEDs I found, with the multimeter set on the 20k ohm setting we got a reading of 119 for all the canbus LEDs, 005 for the OE incandescent 501s and no reading at all for the spare LEDs!

My feeling is the canbus LEDs are vastly over resisted compared with the other two and were drawing way to much current for the circuit board to cope with, you'd usually expect an led to draw significantly less current than a standard bulb. As far as I understand I from my research, the canbus LEDs are designed to act like an incandescent bulb to prevent the canbus system on a modern car from thinking there is no, or very little resistance and therefore giving a blown bulb warning.

So, you'd expect a canbus error free led to more or less mimic the resistance of the incandescent bulb it's replacing, but as we can see from the multimeter readings, these canbus error free LEDs hugely exceed the resistance of the standard bulbs!!!!

I reckon there might very well be a manufacturing defect or a design defect!!!!!

I would say that you should steer clear of canbus types when you don't need them, as the system is not in place to check for voltage drop and resistance

In your sidelights they'd probably be fine...if you have a modern car, that needs canbus compatible LEDs...


try brightlightLEDs.co.uk

Well yeah, this type anyway!!!!!

I wouldn't try them in the side lights either, the resistance is so much greater than standard bulbs as to be cause for concern in my opinion!! Surely there is no need for it to be that high!!

I'd love to see what the resistance is on other canbus bulbs, are they all like that? Anyone got any we could check?

For now I'll fit the ones I ordered today and look for a replacement PCB

no such thing as a canbus bulb...all bulbs have enough resistance for the canbus system to recognise them

no idea why the LEDs are so high, doesn't make much sense...unless you bought cheap ones from China...dodgy old stuff that

Sorry, I should have clarified, I meant the canbus LEDs, was typing in a hurry

These days EVERYTHING comes from china

In other news, brand new Eagle F1 going on the front near side, should scrub up nicely come Sunday £115 though!!!!!

Can you believe its only been 6 months since my last update, I must be slipping AND I've actually done stuff too

Here's Meanie in her winter boots post Christmas shopping in and emtpy Merry Hill...





I've been bangin on about getting some proper winter tyres for a couple of years now, Eagles are awesome, but suck in the snow

So, I came across a set of Kleber Quadraxers with only 500 miles on them from one of the guys at A Line in Dudley, perfect fit for my old 15's, 195/50R15, had them on for about a month and a half now and typically, no bloody snow, not even a hiint of frost so far



Knobblys



I have also been wanting to try rim tape as well, not had much luck fitting it to the 17's but the 15's are perfect for it, I got mine from Streetbike in Halesowen, £6.99 for enough to do 4 17" car wheels or two bike wheels, the green they do is almost an exact match for Sparkle Green too and its reflective, as you can see below...



On the to do list, I have a CV joint sitting on the hall table waiting to go on, its only been clicking for 6 months, no rush, i also need to get and offside steering arm as well, and possibly a second CV joint, if only my man cave was available to work in the warm and dry

Pic3

I've also, after much debate, like 3 years worth finally bought some T3 LEDs for my dash switches, I got 3 sets of 4 pink LEDs, we'll see how they shine through the green tint, hopefully won't need to mod the switches, lets hope this works better than my attempt to replace all the bulbs in the clocks with LEDs earlier this year, turns out the handbreak and airbag warning lights don't like LEDs, who knew????



Of yeah, nearly forgot, I got some bits from my wife via Dragon Rob (thanks buddy) for my birthday, namely, a set of Lexus rear lights, been after them for years (no surprise), got plans for these, not going to fit them as they are, they haveto look factory and fit in with the red bar. I also got the right PCB for the clocks and x2 fuseboards/body computers, pukka Type R ones too, so I can hopefully getmy fading interior lights to work again, it also furthers my long standing quest to see just how much Type R kit I can fit onto Meanie









Which reminds me, massive thanks to Stu too for Cleanies old clock surround, its another pukka Type R part as well

Pic6

*there are no pics yet due to photobucket being rubbish!!!!

nice to see some news here
got to say, Meanie is still one of my favourite F's on here and my personal Nr.1 sparkle green BA

i like the rim tape and it's legal over there with it being reflective? This sure would be an illegal thing over here

I don't know about the legality of it over here Nina, however, it would seem a little silly if it was considering it's making the car more visible at night, therefore safer, but hey, we're dealing with EU health and safety here, which usually makes no sense at all

Just out of interest, do you have to fit winter tyres in Austria and if so, what do you use?

Bless ya Meanie will be chuffed

i do like that rim tape , and i think the flyeyes will tie the lights in well with the main rear reflector too

Cheers mate, really quite pleased with the tape, my first attempt was with white tape on my 17s, bit of a disaster as I did it outside with the wheel on the car, much better results with the green with the wheel off the car in my nice new garage

Although I really like the flyeyes, I've been doing some research on other forums, apparently it looks good from a distance but pants up close :s

think it will be that if you do anything with the light clusters you will have to do to the reflector panel too.... .

Nooooooooooooooo

Plan is to get the clusters to fit in with the reflector, no plans to change that, it's integral to the look and shape of the car in my opinion, until flyeyes came along my solution was red tint film, sadly, I don't have the skills to do it myself, believe me, I've tried Spray is out because it wears off eventually

If I were to do something with the reflector, it would need to be along the lines of the way Paul has dipped his, but at £80 a go pls whatever the clusters would cost it's way out of my league right now

The right solution will present itself eventually

Flyeyes do look good close up, I had them one my Civic front and back and got loads of positive comments, even from the rozzers aswell when they pulled me as they thought it was tinting film



Been meaning to ask mate, do you have a link for those sidelight bulbs, I've been on eBay but I haven't a clue which ones to get

That's not bad chap, how does it look with the lights on, saw a YouTube vid taken at night, think it was actually a civic, the light output looked noticeably dimmer, how was it in real life?

With the standard bulbs yes the light output was noticibly dimmer, I put led sidelights in which improved things but never changed the main bulbs

A lot of others used the Ring Xenon Ultima bulbs with the flyeyes which I suppose to improve the light output

Hmmm, interesting

Since I'm only going to be doing the rear clusters and I'm going to fit LEDs to both stop/tail lights and indicators that should be fine, cheers mate

Still like to see some lights done in red before I make a final call though

ha ha ha , what i meant was that if you do the tail light clusters you will have to tie them in with the rear reflector, so if you were to go along the lines of paul's car then the lights would have to be dipped too, could even try masking a few bits off prior to tinting/spraying/fly eyeing as you have done with the front side lights

Yeah, it all has to match

Doing the reflector like pauls looks great, but do you dip the lens or the relector? Perhaps tint the chrome red and apply one layer of dip to the lens?

Yes we have to. Strictly speaking, our law requires winter tyres from Nov 1st till April 15th.
I don't need winter tyres on my BA though as she's only a summer car. My runabout and winter car is a Fiesta which currently has Goodyear winter tyres on.

Oooooooo, would they be Goodyear Ultragrips by any chance?

Yes, i think Ultragrip 7.
Edit: My boyfriend just told me i have only 2 Goodyears now (the rear ones) since a few weeks
The front tyres were already in too bad condition for the roads, so he had to change them. So the actual front tyres are Vredestein.

Cheers Nina, Vredestein are pretty good tyres, unless Goodyear resurrect the Eagle F1 or something like it, I've pretty much decided to go with their Ultrac performance tyres one I run out F1's to buy