LED clearance lights failing

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Mike

HarmsWay wrote:
I don't think mine are wired in series because in some cases there are 1 or 2 of the 4 working.

The appeal of LED lighting for a vehicle was not saving power (although all those bulbs do add up) but rather longer life. They have a big advantage in terms of resistance to vibration compared to incandescent. Also because they aren't user serviceable or generate much heat it should be easier to seal them from water.

It's too bad lousy "off-shore" manufacturing trumps all that. :M

I don't think mine are wired in series because in some cases there are 1 or 2 of the 4 working.

The appeal of LED lighting for a vehicle was not saving power (although all those bulbs do add up) but rather longer life. They have a big advantage in terms of resistance to vibration compared to incandescent. Also because they aren't user serviceable or generate much heat it should be easier to seal them from water.

I'm a bit disillusioned with LEDs as vehicle lights. I've been using them on trucks for well over ten years and they seem to have a failure rate similar to incandescent bulbs.
Power draw isn't really an issue for running lights, you've got all the electricity available you need.

I have LED boards from EBAY CHina that are rated to work with DC Voltages up to 12.2VDC or something like that...

These boards do not have a regulator circuit built-in. I purchased several spare boards in the event I started loosing interior lights LEDs since my RV produces up to 14.4VDC with its Converter/Charger unit. These were installed in 2009 replacing 12V incandescent 921 miniture Light Bulbs. So far I only have a couple of LED boards that have three led's in a roll on the board that are not working. I am assuming this board uses only three led elements in series for the 12VDC source. The remaining three groups are added in parallel to give out the specified light lumens specs.

I have seen My Truck DC Voltage go as high as 14.5-6VDC from the Alternator depending on the Battery charge state which might be out of range for some LED elements. Having four LEDs in the truck replacement safety light wired in series would add an additional DC voltage range specification without using any specific regulation circuits other than a single resistor perhaps... I have no idea if the LED elements are wired in series or parallel in the Truck Safety light replacement LED units.

I also have no idea what the designed DC voltage range spec is for a single Light-Emitting Diode (LED). Probably varies from the different manufactures. You would think these truck safety light LED replacements would be designed to work with the Maximum DC voltage the Truck 12VDC system setup will produce...

Just babbling on here with my limited knowledge of how a LED works.

I suspect wiring issues is the cause for LEDs not working in this case...

Roy Ken

I'm in the same boat. 2 rear LED clearance lights have died on me with wiring apparently not being the cause. The circuit boards just gave up and getting exact replacements has been a pain.

In terms of components there's not much to them. The circuit board has the 4 LEDs, a diode bridge and 2 resistors. If I can, I'll pull the circuit board out and look for cold solder joints but I don't expect to find any.

There's probably nothing wrong with the LED's themselves. It's poor connections, solder jointa and other components that fail.