Hi All, I'm hoping someone can help me, i have what is probably a simple problem-
My car (Mitsubishi) has a dual filament stop/tail light for each of the rear lights (12v 5/21w), and a 3rd LED highlevel brake light.
Incase your not familar with this setup due to this being an international newsgroup and i'm in the UK, when you turn your headlights on, the 'tail' light filament of the bulb illuminates (5w) and illuminates the red section of the rear cluster. When you press the brake pedal, the 'stop' light filament of the bulb illuminates (21w) and the red section of the rear cluster illminates brighter, also the red LED brake light illminates.
I wish to replace the stop/tail light bulbs with LED items, these i have bought and fitted, however they give the following issue-
They work fine in the cluster for stop/tail operations, but when in the tail light only (Lights on, but the brake pedal not depressed) a few LEDs in the high level brake light illminate dimly, if i replace the LED bulbs with the filament ones the LED remains extinguished in tail light only.
Does anyone know why this is happening? I assume its something to do with the LED bulbs having lower resistance than the filament counterparts so some voltage is 'leaking' through to them? Can i put a resistor in the line of the power to the high level brake light to solve this? If so what value of resistor would you suggest?
Thanks for any and all help
Matt