Buy red led bulbs for the brake bulbs, the cool white will give you a lighter color...orange. Same for turns, buy amber colored bulbs. The colors are true.

 

Hmm, I put the old bulbs back this morning. Like you, I don't fancy messing about soldering resistors into the circuit, especially as they may not even work.

Pity, but it was worth a try. Thanks for your input, Jacsun & XKRacer.

 

The bulbs in my pics are red to match the red part of the lens. But that's good advice for anyone just venturing into the whole LED world. I think the color was OK: just brighter. I was hoping the built in resistors would be enough for real "plug and play" but apparently not: at least for now with this supplier.

 

Jacsun, I presume you have already put LEDs in the indicators? They look great and work fine, much more convincing than the brake bulbs.

 

Actually I haven't but I am glad to hear it. Thank you. My order was in two parts and those are on the way.

That's really weird. The website and some other things I have read say the indicators are usually the one spot there will be trouble if there is going to be any. I put LED bulbs in the two places there are (normally) dual filament bulbs. Maybe the system is expecting a a higher draw than the built in resistor gives on those but the built in resistor creates the right amount of draw for the (normally) single filament bulbs.

 

Just to fulfill the above request of my fellow Midwesterner I bought the resistors and some other bulbs.

Here is what worked for my 01 XK8:

A) WLED-x5-CBT (the "x" is a variable for a color. Amber=A, White=W, Red=R). I put two whites above my license plate, two reds for markers in back and two amber for markers in front. No problems, they are all plenty bright, no resistor or any mod's needed. The plate lights are a really nice color with my gray paint as opposed to the normal bulbs which are dingy and old looking (see left side of pic for regular bulb and right side for new).

B) 1156-W26-CBT. White back up light. WOW! They light up like a headlight. Really helps with backing visibility...significantly. No resistor needed.

Here is what did NOT work:

C) Brake light (1157-R26-CBT). With or without part RL-650 (6 ohm, 50W resistor) I kept getting a "check rear light" message shortly after I turned lights on (I didnt have to step on the brake for the message to come on). When the external resistor was connected, the resistor was heating up as it should but the light was slightly flickering.

D) Running light (bottom, center red light). No go, same thing as C. I kept original bulbs everywhere else when I tested these so I wouldn't be changing two variables at once.

So I called today and returned the 4 Red 1157 bulbs and the 4 resistors I bought. They have a 30 day return policy. They should refund my money when they get the bulbs. Assume they did that unless I post otherwise. www.superbrightleds.com

I will keep searching for plug and play!!

 

Hi gents.
Really appreciate the sharing about your experience with LED's. I've currently replaced my parking and turn signal bulbs in both headlights, and am waiting for the order of tail light replacements to arrive. Below is the picture of parking/auxiliary LEDs. Big difference in brightness hence functionality in my opinion.
I purchased all my LEDs from CARID.COM in case you are interested. Really disappointed over the reports of error messages generated by tail light control unit...at least I know that I can return ones on order .
Parking Light (194 / 2825 Bulb)