blowing rear brake light bulbs

[sholtby]

Take the brake failure bulb out. You wont need it as LED bulbs dont fail.

Simon

[liuleichan]

>Take the brake failure bulb out. You wont need it as LED
>bulbs dont fail.

Two points:

1. You can't replace all your bulbs with LEDs - if nothing else, there's no direct replacement (at least with LEDs) for your headlight bulbs. And for things like indicator bulbs, it becomes more complex to use LEDs for bulbs, because you tend to need to introduce some further resistance into the circuit.

2. LEDs do fail - admittedly they tend to have much longer lifespans than say filament bulbs, but they do and will still fail at some point.

[sholtby]

On my car '95 850 the warning light only comes on if a tail or brake light has failed. I've had a headlight and front side light fail and it hasnt come on. I'm not sure about the indicators.
It would be quite expensive to replace every bulb with LEDs though. I've just replaced the front side lights so they match my HIDs.

Simon

[liuleichan]

>On my car '95 850 the warning light only comes on if a tail
>or brake light has failed. I've had a headlight and front side
>light fail and it hasnt come on. I'm not sure about the
>indicators.

Well on mine (98 S70) - according to the manual - it is supposed to work on all bar the indicators, and for those, the manual states that rapid flashing is the sign that an indicator has failed.

The sidelights / parking light bulbs aren't detected by the warning light in my car, but the headlight bulbs certainly are. The brake lights are supposed to be picked up when your foot is on the brake pedal.

As to the foglights, I'm not sure - I suspect the assymetrical rear would cause issues, and I'm not sure about the fronts, because there optional - but there never likely of much use, so not much loss there, really.

>It would be quite expensive to replace every bulb with LEDs
>though. I've just replaced the front side lights so they match
>my HIDs.

I've replaced the sidelight bulbs with LEDs.

As to the rear lights, they are more expensive than normal bulbs, and as indicators they may cause issues with resistance in the circuit, but as the bulb failure warning is supposed to be about difference in resistance across the sides, so long as you have them matched across sides (ignoring indicators for a second) I'm not sure there should be a problem.

And some of the additional cost may be offset with the likely significant improvement in service life compared with filament bulbs.

Hi, I'm a newbie. I ran a trusty old 240 Estate for about 5 years, and recently replaced it with a 1994 SE Estate, which I'm told "eats rear bulbs".

I'm also told that replacing the bulbs in the estate is very fiddly, and as most of my driving is at night, often on bad roads, I don't particularly want be plagued with bulbs popping.

Can liuleichan or anyone else recommend a good source of LED replacement tail lights that are an easy fit (direct replacement) for the original 21W BA 15s and 21W/4W BAZ 15d bulbs?

The added benefit is that LEDs come on more quickly than filament bulbs, which might be useful at 70mph, with a tailgater 'in tow'.

Thanks and Best Regards,

- Greg

[liuleichan]

>Hi, I'm a newbie. I ran a trusty old 240 Estate for about 5
>years, and recently replaced it with a 1994 SE Estate, which
>I'm told "eats rear bulbs".
>
>I'm also told that replacing the bulbs in the estate is very
>fiddly, and as most of my driving is at night, often on bad
>roads, I don't particularly want be plagued with bulbs
>popping.
>
>Can liuleichan or anyone else recommend a good source of LED
>replacement tail lights that are an easy fit (direct
>replacement) for the original 21W BA 15s and 21W/4W BAZ 15d
>bulbs?
>
>The added benefit is that LEDs come on more quickly than
>filament bulbs, which might be useful at 70mph, with a
>tailgater 'in tow'.

I've bought LED replacement sidelight bulbs from www.ultraleds.co.uk

They sell replacements for rear / tail-light bulbs, too.

Thanks for the link: the LEDs look like they'll do the trick :)

- Greg

[Phil Russell]

I had a similar problem on my 2 litre 20v 850 saloon . It was L reg and I owned it from new for 4 years ... super car.
It regularly blew brake lights .. there were 2 each side as I recall. Never did find out why, just kept a supply of spares.
Cheers, Phil