Well I just put some wedge LED's in my mirror in the interior (cool white) and they look awesome.

Except they don't turn off all the way. When the door is shut they are very very dim (they don't put out any visible light rays unless you look under the mirror at them you can see a dim glow).

Any ideas what's going on? Was thinking of rotating them 180* to see if that helps bc I know LED's matter which way they are wired.

 

This has been an issue with in home lighting, and has been my reason for delay in doing leds in my car.
Most electrical devices are never fully "off". filament light bulbs need to take a certain current to operate, but they emit no light when they are turned off. However, current still passes thru at this point, especially with GMs wire everything on one circuit policity. LEDs require very low current and do not need a certain voltage to begin to emit light.
So in short the low current passing thru is enough to make it glow.
I have not had the time to mess with this for a fix, but I relay could solve it as well as a better led. I know some of them have in line resistors.
Hopefully that helps

 

That actually was my hypothesis for them still being on. So them being on isn't draining the battery anymore than if they weren't on correct?

 

You will be fine...you could add resistors to fix it but like i said its fine.

The Cause...

There is a always running current of 2.4volts, this is to enable the incandescent bulbs to light up as fast as possible once triggered, not enough to dim the incandescent filament but enough to bring the led to a faint glow...

 

Yea I'm not about to add a resister in the mirror, Don't even want to think about attacking that project haha.

Thanks guys

 

exactly my feelings too, lol.

 

ive had an LED "pod" with like 6-7 LEDs in my car for 2 years now with it "glowing" all the time and starts fine everytime i wouldnt worry about it

 

You are not switching anything to add extra power, so it would ben no different than before. Now you are just aware of it.

I agree that adding resistors would be too crazy of a project in that spot, but I believe that some companies run resitors inside the casing. Where did you get yours from?

 

SuperbrightLEDs

 

That is the company I was looking into. Do you have a link to the one you got. I'll try and figure out if it's fixable for ya

 

The bulb size is 194. I actually just ordered the 6LED 194 bulb and hopefully it will fit. Fit meaning the large 6 LED cluster

 

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-b...ini-wedge.html

I got the 6x LED cluster as well. The LED's aren't a problem for me as long as they aren't drawing anymore power from my battery like you said they weren't. That's all I was worried about. I didn't want to be slowly draining my battery just because I wanted to have LED's. Anyways those are the bulbs I ordered

 

They hardly drain anything at all. One time I left all of my LEDs on, something like 280 of them for 2 full days and my car still started just fine... I wouldn't recommend it though :P

 

Just ordered a bunch of 6led 194 bulbs. Gonna do my license plate and my mirror.

 

In addition to not requirinfg a lot of current to light up, they also do not use a lot when they are lit. So 280 leds (which is crazy haha) draws probably about the same as both dome lights on for one night

I asked to see if they had resistors or not. It says they do, but they must just not be enough. The ones they make for my Yota are the glass style bulbs and have more space for resistors. 194s are tightly cased, though