LED taillights

japanev1 · 03-21-2008, 12:46 PM

Hey I just wanted to put out an important FYI before I post pics of my LED mods...
I ordered some sweet 3W Luxeon LED 7443 taillight bulbs for my Insight and installed them yesterday and they looked awesome! I mean they were super bright on the low tail/parking output, and incredibly bright on the brake light output. Definitely on par or brighter than stock, albeit with less "lamp glow" as the LEDs only shine straight out instead of all around the housing. Even being directional LEDs, the entire housing was illuminated sufficiently that I would describe it as 100% safe, and I am very picky. I was super excited to go pick up my friend from work to show the LEDs off, when it all went wrong. As I was leaving my house the assist bar on the instrument panel was blank. I hit the gas, no yellow bars. I really give it some gas, no yellow bars and the 3 banger revs up. Oh $#!? I thought to myself, I have broken my Insight! The cruise control would not engage. I pulled into a parking lot and shut the car off. My old Prius could remedy any problem that might arise with a simple "restart" so I was told, even though I never had to do this in my Prius. I figured this might help my Insight. Nope. No warning lights on, no nothing. Regen worked fine, but I tried not to do this as the battery was almost full and I didn't want to overcharge it. The only thing I could think of was I changed the taillight bulbs, so I called the friend I was going to pick up (his car is a fleet of bicycles) who is ironically a car mechanic and happened to have a set of fresh 7443 bulbs in his shop. I put in the incandescent bulbs, started her up and (sigh of relief) all was well again. After close examination the 7443 bulb and wiring harness have some funky parallel wiring going on, and if the circuits are not connected the IMA assist won't engage and the cruise control won't work. I may investigate non-intrusive methods of rectifying this problem in the future, but for now I am too happy to have my baby working properly again I may just shrug off the LED tail-lamp idea. I guess this is all part of the LED exploratory process given the amount of different type LED bulbs it took before I was satisfied with what I have done so far. I have successfully installed LED bulbs (that I am content with) for the reverse lights, rear license plate light, front parking lights, and front side marker lights. I will put up pictures and details once it stops raining here and I have a chance to wash my car. I thought I'd just FYI anyone considering LED tail lights for their Insight, and see if anybody else has successfully accomplished this task without dramatically altering their wiring harnesses.

dtlee · 03-21-2008, 01:01 PM

That's a huge design flaw if the car won't use IMA assist when its tail light goes out. I would guess your LED's actually did the opposite of "going out" --- did they short the system perhaps? Are the LED's directional (ie. Polarity sensitive)?

What about if you simply remove the bulbs altogether. Will the assist work? Replace the bulbs to see if it stops working... etc...

**gpsman1** · 03-21-2008, 11:11 PM

I have had the Insight for 3 days and I know nothing about the tail-lamps.

However, I got off-the-shelf LED's for my Ford Escape Hybrid.
When they came, the pins were mirror image of what they needed to be.
I had the flat blade push-pull bulbs.

By moving the wires (on the bulb) by bending them 180 degrees relative to the blade, everything worked fine.
I suspect ( but dont know ) this may have something to do with your "problem".
But wierd... you would think the tail-lamps would be far removed from the IMA. How funky!

-John

james · 03-22-2008, 01:25 PM

I've had LED tail lights for a couple of years. (Got them because one of the taillight lenses was broken, and the LEDS would give red light.) No problems, but the ones I got were made as a direct replacement for the bulb type.

joecvt · 03-22-2008, 02:31 PM

I looked at the electrical manuals and didn't see any relationship to the tail lights and the IMA. The only thing I did see was the brake pedal switch to operate the brake lights also signals the ECM that the brake pedal is in use... Perhaps some voltage was feeding back to the ECM indicating that the brake pedal is being used so it would make sense then not to provide assist if the ECM "thinks" that your foot is on the brake. Regen working does make sense.

Since the cruise control did not come with the car as a standard item or an option, they would be all aftermarket installs so the is no default power source to look at for why the cruise control didn't work. BUT, every cruise control also uses the brake pedal signal and the cruise control will disengage (or not engage at all) if it "thinks" your foot is on the brake....

I think the mystery is solved. It doesn't sound like the IMA system would be designed to be disabled if a typical bulb was burned out. The must have been some strange feedback on the brake light portion.

JoeCVT = Just your average CVT owner

noother · 03-28-2008, 01:31 AM

I just installed LED parking,side, licence plate and tail/brake lights today. They all look great, plenty bright.

Went for a drive and have a few problems now. The assist isn't nearly as aggressive and it goes to full regen when I let off the gas, as if I had my foot on the brake.

At first I was thinking the brakes aren't on, so it wouldn't be the brake circuit. But, I looked up the circuit diagram in the Honda service manual and found the brake switch sends 12v to the 2 brake lights, the high mount brake light as well as the ABS modulator and the ECM. So the ABS and ECM do have a path to ground through the three brake lights. One of these could look at the brake light resistance, or need a ground on the circuit which may not be evident as the new lights are diodes. I guess I could put a resistor across a bulb, but that would defeat the power savings of the LED's. Maybe I'll experiment with different resistors and see if the problem goes away and still retains some wattage savings.

I'm thinking the ABS probably doesn't have anything to do with the charging, maybe the ECM?

joecvt · 03-28-2008, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by noother

Went for a drive and have a few problems now. The assist isn't nearly as aggressive and it goes to full regen when I let off the gas, as if I had my foot on the brake.

Please look at my post from a couple of days ago that is directly above yours...

JoeCVT = Just your average CVT owner

**gpsman1** · 03-28-2008, 11:06 AM

More LED gremlins???

I just put in LED parking lights and LED dome lights. ( front only )
( superbright, BTW ) and they look great.

Just did that last night.
This A.M. when I started and pulled out, I had NO DASH INSTRUMENTS!!!
No Speedo, No Odo, No Tach, No IMA, nothing. The entire display was dark.
( and I mean dark, as in off, not dim )

The car drove normally, but driving with no Speedo and no Tach was freaking me out, so I pulled over and turned the key off for 3-4 seconds and "rebooted". This time all the dash instruments came back on and stayed on for my 10 mile commute to work.

Wierd, Wacky, Wild stuff is going on here!
-John

joecvt · 03-28-2008, 11:13 AM

When you first started out this morning, were your parking lights on (since the dash dims with the parking light switch) ???

JoeCVT = Just your average CVT owner

noother · 03-28-2008, 11:23 AM

JoeCVT, My symptoms were a little different than the original post, I thought I would explore the ground side of things since the path to ground from the ECM link to the brake system is the only thing that changed. I did read your post, good work, I was just a little unclear why the case was closed. I'm going to put one 'normal' bulb back in today to see what happens, will report back.