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Possible drop-in LED tail bulbs?

6K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  martymoe 
#1 ·
3157 Tail Light Brake Light Turn Signal LED Bulbs

Several of the new LED bulbs there show that they're NON polarized (the ones with the patent listed. I know what you're thinking, they are all polarized by definition, but these have some circuitry built in that they've apparently patented.

Now, I use alot of bulbs from this website, but I don't have the new non-polarized ones. My truck is already running their SMT LEDs, or I'd order a pair of these and run them in my truck if they didn't work in the RZR.

Who wants to be the first to try these ones? Looks like you can get in for $20 per bulb and they have more of the same diodes on them than the ones I have in my truck.

Also, for what it's worth, I LOVE the bulbs I'm running in my truck. Great light and I've not had a single issue with them in years of use.
 
#3 ·
3157 Tail Light Brake Light Turn Signal LED Bulbs

Several of the new LED bulbs there show that they're NON polarized (the ones with the patent listed. I know what you're thinking, they are all polarized by definition, but these have some circuitry built in that they've apparently patented.

Now, I use alot of bulbs from this website, but I don't have the new non-polarized ones. My truck is already running their SMT LEDs, or I'd order a pair of these and run them in my truck if they didn't work in the RZR.

Who wants to be the first to try these ones? Looks like you can get in for $20 per bulb and they have more of the same diodes on them than the ones I have in my truck.

Also, for what it's worth, I LOVE the bulbs I'm running in my truck. Great light and I've not had a single issue with them in years of use.
Jesse,
I've read other posts regarding LED's. What do you mean by drop-in?

Yea, don't they push in???

Seriously what he referring to is the need to add diodes to the standard LED bulb to operate properly with Polaris's back-ass way they wired our tail lights.

Let us know if they will work, somebody.
 
#4 ·
They just won't "drop in." They require a resistor modification for them to work. Basically your tricking the system. I did this over a year ago, and they are still working great this day. Not to mention saving power from the lack of a charging system.

Here is the write up I had over at PRC, I just copied over from there to here. Although I did change the resistor size from the original article. I originally used a 470 ohm resisitor, but people were happier with 330 ohm resistor.

LED 3157R Mod

As it's been said on here before, you can't just go out and pop in a LED bulb in your tail lights, and drive on into the sunset. Polaris likes to throw us challenges and make everything work backwards from everything else in the world. Instead of using a common ground system like everything else, they used a 12v common system. Putting everything to ground when the lights are on and the brake pedal is depressed.

With typical bulbs, this is no big deal because they don't care about polarity. LED lights are another story. Even though they claim polarity won't matter (on the box it might say non-polarized) they still won't work due to how the Polaris's system works. Even swapping wires in the bulb's socket won't work due to how the socket is made.

How the LED's are supposed to work:

Two of the pins are grounded, lets just say pins 3 & 4.
When the rear taillight is on, pin 2 will have 12v applied. The LED's are on, but in a dim state.
When the brake pedal is pressed, pin 1 will have 12v applied, and will cause the LED's to go to full brightness. In this case, pin 1 will always override pin 2.

The problem is, these LED bulbs are non-polarized, so even if you flip them, everything still works even though the pins are now inverted. This is accomplished by the circuit board that's in these bulbs. As long as two pins have a common ground, the LED's will work properly. This is where we have a problem on the RZR.

Are RZR's use two pins as a common 12v, so when one of the pins goes to ground to complete the circuit, (lights or brakes) it confuses everything and the LED's go full brightness. The only true way to correct this is to use a relay to change the whole circuit over. But I have found a trick to making these things function just by using two resistors. (One for each LED bulb.)

You can use a 330 Ohm resistor to limit the current flowing to ground causing the LED's to be dim, even though they are really wanting to be on full brightness. The beauty about this is, with the 3157R LED bulbs, there is enough room to actually modify the bulbs themselves instead of cutting your brown wire on the taillights. That way you will have less probability of failures, and also be able to go back to a regular incandescent bulb!

So there are two ways to go about this:

1. Modifying the LED bulbs: Requires soldering, backwards compatible
2. Inserting a resistor in series with the brown wire: Cut, add resistor, heat shrink or tape.


Here is a guide to modifying the LED bulbs.

First thing you need are the 3157R LED bulbs. I bought these from AutoZone for $16.99
Second thing you will need is a 330 Ohm resistor that's ½ watt. You could use a ¼ watt, but the problem is the leads on it are pretty small. A ½ watt resistors have about the same lead size as what the bulb uses.



Now straighten out the legs on the bulbs.



Next there are six holes. Take a small screw driver, and gently press out on the board. Work each side evenly, the board will pop and slide right out. (Sry crappy pic)





Now you need to cut Pin 2 on the bulb, but make sure you leave enough so you can solder the resistor to the leg.. It might be hard to see the mask on the board, but they are labeled. If you can't see it, then you can just go by the orientation of the pic shown.



Now trimming one side of the resistor lead, you can solder the resistor to the lead you just cut.



Trim the other end of the resistor so it's even with the other leads.



With this done, you can go ahead and reassemble the bulb. It can kinda get tricky getting the leads to go back into the hole, but just take your time and they will go. Just be careful not to cross the leads into the wrong hole.

Then bend the leads back to where they were.



As you can see, I made a mark on the side of the bulb, opposite side of the resistor. Since you have made a change to one of the pins, polarity now will now matter. The red mark will indicate this side goes to toward the red wire on the socket. Or you can just look and make sure the mark goes toward the clip on the socket like shown.



That's it! You will now have functioning rear LED lights! This process is actually pretty simple. After gathering my materials, it only took me 10 min to do it. No relays, no hacking wire. And you can always go back to incandescent bulbs if needed. One side note, you don't have to use a 330 Ohm resistor. If you want your taillights brighter, just decrease the resistant value. If you want them dimmer, increase the resistor value. I just found 330 Ohms to be a good point for me.

For those who don't want to solder it into the bulb, you just put the resistor in series with the brown wire like this.



This is shown at the socket end. I'm sure you might even be able to add just one resistor before the connector since at that point it would just be one wire. I didn't look or check into this, but it might be possible. You might have to adjust the resistor value since one resistor will be supplying two LED's.

Here are two videos showing the LED's on action. (CRAPPY CELL CAMERA WARNING)

Day Shot




Night Shot

 
#8 ·
you can take the plug apart, shuffle around the wires, add a $2.00 relay up under the bed and it will work with the drop in bulbs, plus you dont lose any brightness.
if you add a third brakelight, you can also use that same circuit to drive it too.
 
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