Need Some Major Help with My New LED lights

[douellette]

Okay so a few days ago I installed my new LED fog light bulbs. Everything worked great. Today I got my new switchback LED's for the front parking lights. Before I touched them, they worked fine. Installed the new LED's and now the parking lights, blinkers and fog lights don't work at all. Doesn't matter if key is on, headlight switch pulled out. The emergency flasher works fine still. Also when I put the parking lights on, the rear lights work fine. Was checking the lights and noticed one of the parking light sockets was hot. turned power off and pulled out the bulb. The plastic for the base started to melt. These are 3157 leds so they are the right socket. Only one of them did this. Tried eye balling the underhood fuse for parking lights and it looks good. Tried putting the regular bulbs back in and still nothing in the front works. Only thing in front working is the headlights.

 

Also, now with LED or regular bulbs, the blinkers don't work at all. Nothing even on the dash when I turn them on.

 

What the hell could be going on here?? Any help would be appreciated and me being able to fix by tomorrow would be perfect Thanks ahead of time!

 

 

This is on a 98 Regal GS

[pitzel]

The problem with LEDs, at least in the sort of application you're attempting, is they must include some fairly substantial resistors in order to drop the current/voltage down to levels that the LED itself can tolerate. These resistors, of course, cause heat dissipation. The heat dissipated from the resistive elements in such package may very well be substantially different in its location than what would come out of the incandescent light bulb.

 

Check all your fuses, replace with proper incandescent bulbs, and try again.

[carkhz316]

^You're right about LED's in general, but that isn't the case here. Being as that he purchased actual bulbs, they should already be current limited internally to 12V. The only thing that will go wrong with swapping in LED's for any turn signal application is that you will typically get the dreaded hyper flash, or sometimes the bulb out/ "check gauges" light to indicate a perceived bulb out. In the case of the hyperflash, you would just replace the flasher (unless a newer GM with BCM controlled turn signals with no flasher) with a electronic/ heavy duty one for a solid state flashing frequency. In your case though, it sound like a bulb is defective since one was getting hot. Even though LED's do generate some heat, it should still be less than a equivalent incandescent. So, I would suggest to put the regular bulbs back in, and pull the fuse(s) to check, not just eyeball it. Also, did your Regal come factory with fogs or did you wire them in?