If you have an older car where there’s no bulb out warnings, it’s easier to install LED’s… but then it comes down to the flasher, as some base the flash rate on the current pulled and will rapid-flash with an LED replacing an incandescent bulb.
The Chinese have essentially flooded the market with crap LED’s. It’s such a huge waste, when consider all the production for simply subpar items like this. I’ve had my fair share of them burn out and abandoned LED’s for a few years.
Eventually some companies started to make reliable LED’s but for much higher cost. And some would have built-in resistors to trick the CANBUS / VAGCOM / error system. I wasn’t about to pay $44 for a pair of LED bulbs. So, I waited.
FINALLY, there are some makers producing fairly decent bulbs for low prices. Still, some just don’t last like they’re supposed to do. I’ve bought a few bulbs rated to defeat CANBUS error checking, but found they would only work with just 1 set of LED’s on the circuit. For instance, if I tried to do front & rear LED flashers, it would throw an error and I’d get rapid flashing. So, I have incandescent on the front, but LED’s in the rear. It works great. Essentially, rear will be seen much more than the front, as vehicles behind you are traveling in your direction.
I was able to find a supplier of auxiliary side turn signal markers that use multiple LED’s and do a little “animation” of the LED’s flowing forward. It’s enough current not to trip the bulb-out warning.
That was all exterior. Interior is easier, as on my car, a 2007 Audi, the CANBUS doesn’t care at all about interior bulbs. But my big beef was the temperature. 6500k is just unacceptable. Some 6000k rated LED’s are actually reported as showing a little more neutral, no bluish tinge, and that’s acceptable. But thankfully now some makers have focused on warm LED’s for interior bulbs (the festoon type). There’s just one other trick to this… DIMMING! Many of the bulbs being sold do not dim… and that’s a real bummer if you’re accustomed to a nice dim feature in your car.
I ordered a 6-pack set of Festoon style bulbs (41 mm) from Amazon. While the product description didn’t say anything about dimming, there were some reviews that said that they did. LINK.
Turns out these don’t dim, as confirmed by the seller, so I canceled. I found another set that reviewers say WILL dim, and I even asked a question that got 2 confirmations. Once I order and receive them, I’ll post about them rather than including a link now and having to edit again.
