Resistors

I would love to pick somebody's brain in order to figure out more information on resistors!
So... I have a 2015, did the LED DTRL change, hyperflash occured, installed 6 ohm resistors in the front. Hyperflash was fixed BUT now my passenger resistor is blowing my LED bulbs. It's never the whole bulb... just one light will start flickering and eventually that one side will burn out.
Is my resistor bad? Did I install it wrong? Is it a loose wire? HELP!!
So now I have new resistors and would love to fix this problem.

 

As long as you installed the resistors in parallel with the bulb, then they cannot knock out your LEDs. If you installed them in series (meaning you would have to cut one of the wires going to the light and put the resistor between the cut wire), then the LED bulb may not get enough voltage to operate correctly. Assuming you installed them correctly in parallel, then the LED bulb unit is probably just going bad. What brand of LED bulb did you go with?

 

If you want less heating, 10 ohm resistors work in the front. Not so much on the back, though I had to double up two of the 10s I had to make a 5 ohm for the rears, 6 ohms should work in the rear.

Also make sure you've got the right configuration for the ck sockets, some standard led units can be modified easily. And ditto on making sure the resistor is parallel to the bulb, but the hyperflash won't go away if they're in series.

 

I used 6 ohm up front, but made sure to bolt them to metal. Get the aluminum cased resistors, NOT those crappy ceramic ones from O'Reilly's. Cheap LEDS can easily burn out, too. Where did you get them from?

 

They're Lumen LEDs and Lumen resistors. I got them from carid.com. I've seen other posts about those and I do believe someone mentioned them as cheap.
Can you elaborate a little more on your meaning by "parallel to the bulb"?
I undid the tuding behind light, spliced my ground and turn signal wire and everything was fine.
Second go around, I removed my resistor because I assumed it to be broken. I installed a new resistor and spliced the wires. Now I still have hyperflash.

 

You've got two wires going to the bulb socket, having the resistor parallel to the bulb means each of those wires is connected to the terminals of the resistor.

 

Yuppurs, well I have a feeling one of my connections is loose or not appropriately spliced and that's why I'm having an issue. But yes I'm spliced in both wires. I'll have to wait for it to warm up, messing with wires in cold temperatures isn't my thing. Haha
Thank you for your input and help!

 

best way to assemble it is to solder about 4-6" lead wires onto the resistor terminals on a bench, then tap those wires into the harness a bit back from the socket plug. The slack gives you flexibility to mount the resistors to something solid.

I picked up some high-temp double stick tape, then clamped the resistors down to a vertical metal part behind and inboard from the headlights with zip-ties since the tape takes a bit of time to cure. You can also screw/bolt the resistors down, but getting the #4 (or is it #2) hardware to fit the flanges on the aluminum is tricky, and if you end up with much slop on a hole, the nuts are so small they might not really hold.

Another thing to be aware of is that quick-splice clips sometimes don't get through all of the insulation, I think I actually stripped off a bit of bare wire on the harness lines then clipped the taps on at that spot when I did mine ( be careful not to cut the copper when doing that, though). I've heard "T-taps" are even worse at making reliable connections. Stripping the middle of a wire and soldering on a connecting wire is a minor PITA and is probably overkill, but it does ensure a good connection. At least there's no polarity issued to factor in with resistors.

 

Is that double-sided tape thermally conductive? Ideally, you'd want the resistor to be mounted to metal with a layer of heatsink grease between them. But probably not going to be a problem. The resistors are rated for 50 Watts I think, and they should be dissipating around 24W (P = V^2/R = 12*12/6 = 24).

 

The 10 Ohm ones I used would only be dissipating 14-19 W (at the alternator voltage of 14V, 1.4A*14V=19W). The housings are finned and exposed to airflow coming off the radiator which should be enough cooling for that application anyway.

Not sure about conductivity of the tape, but it's fiberglass fabric with adhesive designed for high-temp so it's probably better than gorilla tape, and definitely better than silicone. I didn't trust heat sink grease to stay in place in a vertical installation and got too frustrated with trying to drill holes for bolt/screw mounting (before I noticed that the bolts I had were one size too big anyway). Seems to be working fine a month later, the real test will be road tripping over the summer where it's running for hours at a stretch in hot weather.

 

for using 10-ohms. I put in LED DRLs on mine, but haven't added the resistors yet. I know that at least on the 1st gens, there's a flasher module that can be replaced with one which will flash at a constant rate regardless of load. This would be the ideal way to go....no resistors, no wasted power draw, and fixed flashing rate with or without a trailer hooked up. Still trying to find out if the 2009s use a flasher module, or if it is done through the computer.

Anyone know for sure if there is a flasher module on the 2nd gen 2009 models?

 

If you have the 8-pin flasher, I've got one (LED compatible) to sell fairly cheap ($12 including shipping); never been used, I bought it online before finding out I've got the 12-pin and the price isn't worth the time involved with doing a return over something that was my mistake anyway.

 

Not the greatest pic but this is how I did mine. It's easy to remove the grill and that makes it a lot easier to mount the resistors to metal where they won't melt anything. Then Just splice one wire into each of the wires running to the bulbs.

 

I'll have to check if I have an 8-pin flasher. Just curious, but If your truck has a flasher module, why did you decide to go with resistors instead of an LED Flasher module?

 

I didnt know if our trucks used a flasher module or not so I just went with resistors

 

My truck has a 12-pin flasher module. The only LED compatible version that's made is the 8-pin, but it's listed as being for the 05-12 model years. Short version, the replacement flasher won't connect to the wiring in the truck and I wasn't looking to invest the time needed to hunt down the pinout diagrams and harness connectors I'd need to fabricate an adapter unit (which would also mean losing my DTRLs and only having blinkers, which wouldn't bother me in the least).

Generally the trucks which use the front blinkers for DTRL have the 12-pin unit, which baffles me how they needed extra pins for the DTRL system when there's no additional wires running to the bulbs (they don't even have the 3 wires needed to use the multi-brightness capability of the 4157 bulbs which they use on all 4 corners on my 2010).