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LED brake lighting


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Haven't tried replacing taillights with LEDs, but did replace backup lights in another Ford vehicle. I used 7W Cree LEDs, you can find them on EBay or Amazon. They seem to be working well so far, but it's only been a month or so. Could be the electrical system in the SHO is monitoring the lights in a way that makes LEDs incompatible, but unless they are using some sort of "smart bulb", I don't know what that would be.

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The tail light bulbs were what I tried changing with the correct replacement LED bulbs and they didn't work. I didn't replace the turn signals.

 

Did they just not light up? Keep in mind that the 'D' of 'LED' stands for diode, these bulbs are polarity sensitive and will only work one way. If they don't work the first time, rotate the base 180 degrees and try again. If the bulb is good, it should work.

 

-Rod

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I suppose its possible that the body control module (not sure what Ford calls that or if they even have one) is sensing the resistance of the bulbs (to determine if they burn out) and has some logic that prevents them from lighting if they see a very low resistance (could look like a short circuit to it...). One could measure the resistance of the existing bulb and try putting that in series with the LED bulb to see if it would work. As someone else mentioned they only conduct current in one direction so they have to be installed correctly as well.

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Geesh, I know that LED's have to be installed in the correct "direction"...however, I am not very good with electrical stuff, so I didn't really fool with anything other then the wouldn't light when installed in either direction. However, the first part of your post does make sense, I and suspect that you are correct as the reason they wouldn't light. However, I did forget that sometimes they would light, but then wouldn't go out with the lights turned off...again, :noidea: and since I have limited knowledge of the lighting system, I didn't pursue it further.

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