I just ordered these lights off of V-Leds.com
http://www.v-leds.com/Interior-LED/V...viewsTabAnchor

I was trying to find some nice white lights to replace the ugly yellow stock lights. The vanity lights that i ordered are shorter and smoothed off at the end v.s. our stock vanity's which have the tip that fits into the clips. I took out 1 stock bulb, and tried to fit the new one in. Nothing happened.. Tried it again..."Flash" all the interior lights went out, the dome lights, foot lights...Checked this A.M and the fuse was blown, I think I'm going to pick up a bunch of fuses and give it another shot, but i have no experience with electrical lighting/wiring. Any suggestions? I also bought 2 new dome lights and map lights ( http://www.v-leds.com/Exterior-LED/C...-p6985865.html) but haven't put them in, kind of nervous now. I'm thinking the car might not be able to support the frequency.ANY SUGGESTIONS. HAS ANYONE SUCCESSFULLY CHANGED THE INTERIOR LEDS? Thanks!

D

 

DMS, if you installed a set of lights and as you were installing them it blew the fuse, that is telling me you have 1 of 2 problems:

1) the bulb you bought is bad and shorted itself to ground, or
2) the bulb base is not tight and as you pushed the bulb in, the base (metal clips) moved and touched the body of the car, leading to a direct short to ground.

LED bulbs pull less power than an equivolent incandescent bulb. As for the "frequency" that you are talking about, not sure what you are getting at here. LED bulbs are strictly DC bulbs. They don't have a "frequency" to them unless you are talking about the temperature rating, then that is only telling you the color that the LED will emit.

If you have more questions, let me know. I work around electronics all day long and have built a few LED light projects for vehicles.

 

Thanks Thermo,

So this is what happened, I checked my fuse box this a.m, and the interior light fuse was broken. I ran down to checkers, bought about 5 of them. I installed an LED light in the back dome light, the center dome light, and in both map lights. They all worked great. Now it was back to the vanity lights. I popped off the mirror, took out both vanity light bulbs. The vanity lights they sent me look a little too short, and they do not fit properly in the clips because they do not have the round tip on the top (which fits into the hole in the clip) to hold them in securely. As soon as they touched the metal clip, again all the lights went out, and it blew out the interior fuse once more. I think this is what you meant by.. "2) the bulb base is not tight and as you pushed the bulb in, the base (metal clips) moved and touched the body of the car, leading to a direct short to ground". I put in a new interior fuse and the interior lights went back on. Does this mean that those vanity bulbs wont work for my car? And if so have you found any vanity replacement bulbs that are the nice white color. Thanks!

 

DMS, first, with the use of a multimeter, figure out which posts are positive (ie, have 12 VDC on them and which posts are ground inside the vanity. Then, using the multimeter, do a resistance check of the LEDs. What you should notice is when you put the multimeter to the LED bulbs one way (say red lead on left, black lead on right), the multimeter should read around 600 ohms, but if you reverse the leads (ie, red lead on right, black lead on left), the multimeter will read a very high value (normally infinite). What that is telling me is the end with the red lead when you get a low resistance is the positive post of the LED and it needs to be connected to the tab in the vanity that you found the 12 VDC on. It is possible that if you install the LED backwards, it can damage the LED bulb and cause it to fail to a short, leading to what you are seeing. If during the multimeter checks you are finding a bulb that is down under 50 ohms, that LED bulb is bad and needs to be replaced.

Once you have proven the bulbs good,try this: with the fuse removed/blown, install the new led bulbs and then replace the fuse. Does the fuse blow then? If yes, then you have an issue between the vanity and LED bulbs and switching back to the standard bulbs for the moment is your only option until other bulbs can be found. If the fuse doesn't blow, then you are good to go.

If you are lucky, the LED bulbs may have a "+" and/or a "-" on the ends, helping you get the polarity of the bulbs correct. The + goes to 12 VDC, the - to ground.

I wish you would have posted this last week. I was in Phoenix on travel for work and I would have made it over to your place and helped you get through this. But, a little too late.

 

Thanks Thermo,

That would awesome if you were able to stop by. After reading all the old forums, and checking all over google, I dont think they make led vanity bulbs the fit properly for our vehicles, without having to mod everything. The stock bulb is 36mm by 5mm festoon style. If anyone has replaced theirs please respond.