Bumper marker lights (LED retrofit?)

I am having an issue with my bumper side marker lights.

To refresh your memories, they are the ones that are mounted on the bumper, in an amber retro-reflective housing, and take a wedge-base capsule bulb into a base that slips onto the back of the housing.

I replaced one a couple of years ago because the part of the mount that the base slips around had melted off. (After I got tired of having to duct-tape the base to the housing.)

Now, both mounts have melted off of the housings. One of the bases was hanging down and dragging on the pavement last time I changed the oil.

Presumably, I accidentally replaced the bulbs with bulbs that have wattage higher than the OEM bulbs at some point in the past. (I haven't seen any threads about this, so it must not be a common issue.)

Anyway - does anyone know of a kit that would allow me to retrofit in an amber LED lamp to these housings? IIRC the housings are like $45 each, so even an expensive LED kit would be cheaper than 2 replacements...

Thanks in advance.

I replaced my OEM side marker bulbs with amber colored LED bulb assemblies from superbrightleds.com. That was several years ago and I'm sure they have a much better selection that they had back then.
Edit, I just checked and I may have to do an upgrade soon. http://www.superbrightleds.com/cat/miniature-wedge-base/

Got my yellow wedge LED lights at the local auto parts store, Autozone.

JB05 said:

I replaced my OEM side marker bulbs with amber colored LED bulb assemblies from superbrightleds.com. That was several years ago and I'm sure they have a much better selection that they had back then.
Edit, I just checked and I may have to do an upgrade soon. http://www.superbrightleds.com/cat/miniature-wedge-base/

Click to expand...

I tried the 5 LED wide angle 194 replacement and a few other bulbs in my 05 ATD PD JWagen. I used the amber version 194 for the front bumper side markers and white replacement for a 6418 festooon bulb for the license plate lights.

I loved the light output from them but had to take them out due to amount of radio interference they were causing. The AM band was unaffected but FM band reception (88-108MHz) was totally trashed with noise. Anything weaker than strong local FM stations were buried in white noise. As a ham radio operator and professionally as an EMI/EMC Engineer, this was not acceptable.

The high powered LED assemblies from SuperBrightLEDs.com have a switching power supply circuit in them to drive the LEDs and this is the noise source. Whether or not you have a noise problem will depend on a lot of things, so watch out and be forwarned.

I found the license plate lights (6418 festoon bulbs) to be biggest offender and the front sidemarkers to be a minor contributor. For the license plate lights, I used the version that just has several LEDs and current limit resistor in the package so there's no active circuitry (all passive components). The sidemarkers went back to stock incandescant bulbs.

I suspect the wiring for the license plate lights is routed near the radio antenna, pointing to a radiated emissions problem. The antenna preamp may be powered by the same branch circuit in the car, suggesting it might be a conducted problem instead. Either way, I didn't have time to debug it any further and solved it by using the lower brightness passive version of a 6418 bulb for the licene plates.

I am currently using the white 194 wide angle version in the map lights and the festoon replacements for the center light and other lights inside the car. I have NO radio interference from these, another reason I suspect the radio interference problem with the license plate lights is a conducted type noise problem.

The SuperBrightLEDs are nice but just a heads up about RF noise problems they might cause.

Good luck.

whatnxt said:

Got my yellow wedge LED lights at the local auto parts store, Autozone.

Click to expand...

If those lights are just an LED and current limit resistor (or LED w/internal resistor) you shouldn't have any noise problems. It's all passive circuitry in that case. If the assembly has an LED driver circuit involving a switching power supply, it might be noisy, so just a heads up.