So I went full LED's on everything but my headlights and ended up with the map lights glowing or "ghosting". To fix that I bought some 1k Ohm, 1/4W resistors. All it takes is 1 resistor soldered to one of the map festoon lights on the back. You could also put it in the festoon between it and the clip, but I don't know how well it would stay.
ANYWAY, there is no Radio Shack near me so I ended up buying 25 of the resistors from Amazon. If anyone has this issue and would like one of these resistors just PM me your address and I'll mail you one as I have 24 resistors with no use for them :smile:.
Literally soldered it onto the back of the driver side festoon light. Direction doesn't matter with a resistor. I can pull it out tomorrow and take a picture of it. The reason they glow is because LED's require less current to power than halogens.
Ok I got bored. Ran outside and got a pic since it's dark and you can see the glow. Only my map lights glowed, not enough to make any light really, just enough to see them. With the resistor in there is no glow at all.
Still have the resisters laying around? I recently replaced the last bulb in the interior with a LED and noticed last night they had a soft glow once everything is off.
I think it was both map lights. One resistor should do the trick, but I'll send 2 since I'm not using them. Couldn't find them last night, but I didn't have much time to look. I'll try again after work today.
Most likely. If you've got LED's everywhere else you're just not putting enough load on the system as a whole. These resistors are small enough that putting one or two in the system won't even be as much as having all halogen bulbs. A test could be to put a halogen bulb or two back into some of the easier lights (floor lights in the front). If the ghosting stops the resistor will work.
Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass. It's just one LED in the entire strip and it only bothers me when I have to sleep in the bed (too lazy to set up my tent when camping).
Awesome! I'm going to try this tomorrow on mine. My dome light was "ghosting" after switching it to led. Does anyone have the interior wiring diagram of the fuse box? I want to wire some footwell leds but I want to be able to control them with the dome light in the cab. All the posts on here talk about tapping them into the cargo light. But I'd rather them be tapped with the dome light.
I'm no electrical genius and one of them will probably say no don't do this, but you could possibly just add a fuse tap (add-a-fuse) to the dome light fuse. Run that as your power to your footwell lights, then ground them on a bolt or other known ground wire.
Well I got the ghosting fix done today. Soldered the resistor to the led like the OP did. Worked great no more damn slightly on led. As for the other questions I had I'll try the fuse tap tomorrow hopefully it works. Cause I don't like that the footwell lights turn on when I want to turn on the cargo lights. Doesn't seem to oemish which is what I'm going for. I'm trying to add some pictures but it keeps an error occurred?
what type of soldering did you use? I am having a hard time getting the resister to stick to the LED, the solder sticks to the resister but rounds off the LED. Not sure what kind it is i have, came in the soldering kit.
Lead-free rosin core. Keep the iron on the LED a little bit longer before using the solder to make sure it's hot otherwise it just beads up. The wire for the resistor will get hot fast, but not the LED. I also use flux whenever I solder which helps it stick a bit.
I use lead-free for anything electrical, gives better results.
Flux is your best friend when soldering. You have to get the led lead hot like 300° but I think it might be closer to 400. I used to build circuit boards for a living. Spent a lot of time with iron in hand. Be generous with flux put the heat right to it. Clean it up with alcohol and a q-tip.