Is this weird or is it just me?

So on sunday (11/2) me and some buddies were at my house and when we were going to leave, we hopped in my truck and I pushed the brake. When I pushed the brake all of the dash lights came on. I haven't ever noticed this before and I have had my truck for over 2 years.... I replaced my brake lights with LEDs from pepboys if that is at all relevant. I started noticing this after replacing the brake lights. I havent opened them up again to see if I may have pinched a wire or something. I'm gonna do that today. Any suggestions?

 

from what I read about these trucks you need to install resistors for the LED lights so they function correctly otherwise the truck acts weird

 

I would defiantly check load resistors, otherwise the LEDs will "freak out." Like Keakar said, I think you have to run resistors with LEDs at least from my experiences.

 

Im probably gonna switch them out. I dont mind running normal bulbs. I just wanted to give brighter LEDs a try! Thanks for the help gents!

 

These trucks were meant for incandescent bulbs which take higher voltages and current to ignite than the LEDs. Thus many of the truck's behind the scenes functions will be apparent with small voltage surges used to check continuity. I believe the Tacoma uses a language that many low level computer circuits use called TTL (a serial communication protocol). TTL uses 3.3v when it encodes its signal which is more than enough to light the LEDs up. I have noticed on my fully LED swapped cluster that whenever I turn on the headlights the highbeam indicator will come on for a split second as well. Also my airbag light is always dimmly lit as well, I believe this is because the airbag circuit is always sensing for safety. Hope this sheds some light on what should be harmless side effects. Always good to check your connections anyway, the thin flappy circuit boards used on the cluster seem like they might be prone to voltage or electromagnetic bleeding as well which could cause low draw LEDs to light up.

 

Thanks Speedytech! That was some good info.