Subject pretty much. I contacted them a while back about doing a complete exterior make over for my car and I told them the LED's flicker on my car and he said they have a special one made for that problem. Anyone have them or try? How is light output?

 

I havent heard of ones made for flickering since that is just residual stored power. They do make some for the turn signals......

 

No they aren't made to flicker, they are made to prevent flickering... Since most standard LEDS flicker in our minis

 

Thats what I meant...guess I was intoxicated when I wrote that... I like how they flicker when the cars off...

 

OK, first of all, generally a resistor is added to LOWER the voltage down from 12V to whatever an LED will accept - a single LED generally can only handle about 4V (at 1200ma amperage), so hooking it up direct to the 12V will fry it. Places like Oznium have VERY good pre-wired LEDs with resistore pre-installed at good prices - SEE HERE for details. Bulk pricing available - I order these 10 or 20 at a time, and it's a HUGE time saver - soldering the resistors and double heat-shrinking the connection would take a while. I never bought one that wa sdead on arrival, either. The benefit of pre-resistored LEDS is that you can wire them in PARALEL, so if you lose an LED, everything past that accessory will remain lit - definitely a plus. You also never need to hassle with calculating the load of a series circuit, which can be a pain.

Second - I think what you're talking about is the flicker from some power supply points (the boot light power leads and possibly some places like the tail lights and marker lights) when the circuit should be in the OFF position. This is a known issue (trace voltage in the circuit when it should not be hot) and the fix is easy: get a 1k ohm resistor from Radio Shack for a few pennies (literally) and then solder it into the circuit in series. The resistor will absorb only a tiny amount of current - not nearly enough to visually dim the LED(s) but enough to absorb the trace voltage that remains in some lighting circuits in the "off" position. Lots of people (myself included) use the 1k ohm resistor in the boot light LED MOD, and it totally stops the flicker (see post #167 for details).

 

Does anyone sell LEDs for the boot that are "pre-resistored" so they don't flicker? I had to take mine off cause they flickered too much, gave it a "rice touch" lol...

 

Imagox, how do these "pre-wired" lights actually connect to the factory wiring? do you have to splice in to your factory wires, or does the other end of the lights have a plug that simply plugs into a socket? I have the flicker effect going on with my front park lights, they also stay lit whenever someone uses their key fob around my car? So I always have ppl coming to tell me i left my lights on...would love to solve this issue, and maybe add a few accent lights around the car, but im always wary of cutting into my factory wiring.

 

+1

those prewired ones seem pretty legit

 

That's weird. I have LED strips in my foot wells, boot, dome light, reading lights, and for my license plate and as far as I no non of my LED's flicker at all. The outside ones might, but I've never seen them do it.

Look at 42draftdesigns they have a bunch of LED lights for VW's, but they worked great in my car.

 

I'm too lazy to search, what size are the license plate bulbs, 39mm?

 

In stalled some LED's today under my dash to give my floor boards some ambient lighting.

 

when you say outside are you meaning the turn signals ect ???
if so they sell a resistor to simulate a real bulbs resistance to slow the flasher down to a normal rate ... I got mine from superbrightleds.com

 

no the flickering im talking about is not supposed to happen and the leds on the exterior flicker randomly even when the car is off

 

LEDs generally have a red wire (positive) and a black wire (ground). Just connect the positive to a positive lead and the black to a negative lead - if you use the pre-wired LEDs from Oznium, then they'll run no problems wired in parallel. You don't need to cut the wiring - just use either a vampire tap or carefully strip a small section of the wiring insulation and splice in. If you use a wire that gets exposed to the elements (water), I'd use "brush-on electrical tape" (basically rubberized paint) to totally seal the splice. I use this technique whenever I replace a white lamp in m cabin with an LED - that way, I can just unplug the white light and if I ever want to return to stock, I can just re-plug the white light.

That's a new one to me, but a 1k ohm resistor should eliminate the flicker - the resistor absorbs any stray or trace voltage and converts it into a tiny amount of heat. To wire the resistor, just install it in parallel across the positive and negative wires leading to the accessory LED - here's a VERY high-tech diagram I made just for you:

 

Thank you for that. Extremely high tech!
Love the glare on the LED

 

I've just bought those bulbs since they advertized them as "Direct drop-in replacement for all OEM bulbs" ... I've installed them (license plate), they are no better, they are flickering too ! I've raised the issue, they said I shoub now purchase Load Equalizers to fix it (see my specific post on this topic)