So over the last couple months, I’ve swapped out every single bulb in my car (except headlights/fogs) for LED versions. This isn’t replacing the entire assembly, but just the actual bulb. I used V-LEDs.com, but I think there are a lot of sites out there that sell LED bulbs which fit into your OEM fixtures.
This full replacement is actually a significant decrease in the amount of power used by the lighting system. I’ll try and get some pictures up later if anyone’s interested, but I have an incidental question if there are any electrical gurus out there.
It seems that the load on the system is so low now, that there’s enough residual current to actually faintly activate lights which aren’t in use. I can go into more details if anyone thinks they know anything about this - it only happens when the lights are off (during the daytime), so it’s really not all that noticable. But I’d still like to do something about it if I could. I’ve already installed the resistors so that my signals don’t ‘hyperblink’, but it’s almost like I need more resistance still, just to overcome some sloppy engineering from Nissan.
Do you experience this “lighting” when all lights are off? Could be a faulty switch or a bad ground. When you converted your lights did you also clean all your grounds? I use an HKS earthing kit on my turbo Spec V and have noticed an increase in the light emitted by my system, I also use HID’s as well. I have also converted most of my lighting to LED as well and have not seen any issues similar to yours. Maybe try cleaning up your grounds and see if that helps. Being an automotive service tech I can tell you that there is NO easy fix for electrical.
Yes, this only happens when the lights are off (at least, that’s the only time it’s noticeable), and it only happens to the parking light circuit when I signal. In other words, it only happens to the circuit that is being fed power. At night, when the rest of the lights are on, everything is 100% normal.
For example, I could be driving home during the daytime, flip on the left turn signal, and the rest of the parking light circuit lights up faintly in time with the signal light. So we’re talking the dashlights, taillights, and the non-active signal lights. Headlights are unaffected. Everything goes off when the signal goes off, so it’s almost like there’s just too much juice in the system for the LEDs.
I’ve discovered that the Altimas ground their whole parking light circuit through a crimp splice at the back of the car, which might be adequate for incandescent bulbs, but not enough to properly ground LEDs. I’ve tried grounding my resistors directly to the chassis, but it didn’t help. A mechanic friend also said that hypothetically a diode might help, since that acts like a one-way valve to prevent electricity from flowing back through the system, which is what it sounds like is happening here.
I know that in my 240, I had a similar problem with the turn signals. THe front turn signals have dual filaments and associated posts in the connector for the bulb. I installed the wrong (sungle pole) bulb, and it shorted across both poles. This gave me all kinds of blinking when I used that particular turn signal.
I know that you have a new car, and that may not be it. Could be an easy fix though.
His thoughts are that the power is flowing through the signal circuit, and since so little is being used in the lights now that it’s not being grounded out, and is therefore flowing back through the rest of the circuit. Makes sense to me, and seems to make sense to you too, but I have no idea what a diode is, or how I’d find out more.
Can you install them inline on a wire? Are there frequencies or voltages or anything I’d have to account for? The only thing I know is that the resistors are 3 Ohms each (1 per side).
And dteam, thanks, but I don’t think the bulb is my problem this time. I did a ton of research before I ordered these and I’m pretty sure these are the right bulbs.
I should know your answer but I don’t. I graduated from SAIT 10 years ago in electronics but I haven’t touched the stuff for several years, so I have forgotten a lot, not to mention that I didn’t use most of it in the one electronics related job I had.
My feeling is that it is a grounding issue. Any given LED/light will only draw what it needs and, by obvious extension, any given circuit will draw only what it needs. So if you have other lights coming on, there is something else drawing additional current. But I haven’t installed any LEDs so I don’t know what is all involved with them.
you need to get rid of all your resistance, the more resistance you have the more current you have, and you will experience a larger voltage drop. Also if you have a set of lights coming on when you turn on another then you have a short somewhere, not a ground fault. Good luck finding it lol
Alright, well I honestly don’t think it’s a short, and I’ll explain why. I’m no electrician, but this is what I’ve observed.
One of the first bulbs I replaced was the dome light. After replacing the incandescent with the LED version, I discovered that the dome light actually faintly illuminated when my headlights were on, just driving down the road. Nothing else changed except the dome light being replaced with an LED. The light still came on as normal with the doors, etc, but when the headlights came on at night, the dome light faintly lights up. Barely even enough to notice, but just faintly. I swap it back to the incandescent, everything’s normal.
Check a few other forums, seems like this is common. There’s just a teeny bit of current flowing through the system when the headlights are on that a regular dome light wouldn’t even come close to lighting, but enough where an LED bulb glows a bit.
I’ll show you if I make it to an Edmonton meet this year. And that was nothing except changing one bulb.
I have a feeling that what I’m seeing with the other lights is a symptom of the same problem. I’m thinking about a grounding kit, but for now maybe I’ll just try cleaning the battery terminals and seeing if that helps. Perhaps some better negative grounding will help, but I’m still skeptical.
PS - Duaner, I graduated from U of A with a Genetics degree 12 years ago, and now I’m a software developer. I don’t remember shit about genetics, so I know where you’re coming from!
Well, I decided to follow the advice of others who’d done this, and move my resistors to the front of the car instead of the back. Unfortunately it didn’t fix the parking light problem.
I’d wanted to move them under the hood anyway because they get extremely hot and I didn’t like having them under the carpet in the trunk, so at least it was still productive.
Ultimately, the light thing isn’t a big deal, so I can leave it for now, but when it gets a bit warmer I’ll probably revisit it and see if I can come up with anything.
So I decided I was going to start putting factory bulbs back in just to see if the problem went away, or if it was something deeper. It wasn’t. I started with the taillight assembly because it’s easy to access, and there are a lot of bulbs to experiment with. As soon as I replaced ONE LED bulb on one side with the traditional bulb, all additional “blinking” issues were gone. And it was the side marker light - one of the smallest bulbs in the car.
Because I’m a bit crazy about symmetry, I replaced the marker light bulbs on both side back to factory, and that solves the problem for now. Those bulbs being LED aren’t a big concern for me so I’ll probably leave them as incandescent, but I might see if I can think of a single bulb somewhere on the parking light circuit that I can permanently switch back to traditional and be done with.
It’s crazy to think that 1 tiny incandescent bulb uses more current, and has more resistance, than the entire rest of my LED bulbs combined, including the pretty large brake light bulbs (92 leds each).
You should be fine … there are still lots of bulbs left on your car adding resistance to the circuit. I’ve done every single bulb in my car, except headlights & foglights. We’re talking license plate lights, trunk light, dome/map lights, door lights, hell - even the glove box light.
I think you’ll be fine … plus, the Sentra’s are likely wired differently. In fact, I couldn’t even find any other Altimas that had my problem, and tons have done the LED conversions. I think my case was pretty isolated.
