Colthebrummie

Well-Known Member
When I first got my landy, it was very unreliable therefore I decided that hazard warning lights should be essential. It took me a while to sort these out and in doing so I converted the bulbs and flasher relays to led to reduce the load on the battery, provide brighter light and reduce the load on the fragile wiring. Personally, I like to keep stuff as standard as possible but led flashers seemed a sensible upgrade. I don't use the landy regularly so I reckon the total time the indicators have been used since fitting them as probably been less than an hour in total. It went in for its dreaded mot last Thursday and it failed on two dud indicators, off side front and near side rear. On checking, the bulbs were dead. I thought LED bulbs were supposed to last much longer than filament bulbs. Also, even though there was a faulty bulb on each side the tell tale light on the dash flashed as normal whereas it would have should a fault with the old style bulbs by flashing too fast. Should I go back to old style bulbs and relays or is it a case of finding better quality bulbs. A bulb life of mere minutes is no good at all. I would be interested to hear the experiences of fellow owners.

Col
 
Led bulbs should last longer but cheapo Chinese ones that most people are buying whether realising it or not don't last. I've been pretty lucky with my indicator bulbs but the brake light ones lasted a couple of weeks :oops: so I've gone back to normal bulbs
 
As above, LEDs do last longer but cheap crap ones, not so much. I'm told that LEDs are more sensitive to poor earthing due to the lower draw so that could also be a problem.
The reason is that theŷ don't flash faster when a bulb goes is because you've fitted a solid state unit for the new bulbs that keeps the speed the same irrespective of load. It's not all free jam, you see.
 
Yes, it's a bit inconvenient having to walk around the vehicle before every journey to check that the indicators are working, I know you are supposed to, but who does that? I will find some expensive led bulbs and try those. To be honest, I can't remember how much I paid for the ones I have.
The good news was that because my local mot garage knows me because of our 4 cars and 5 motorbikes and they know I get faults sorted, they gave me a pass for the landy without me needing to take it away fix it and bring it back. So despite the irritation of the bulbs, I was over the moon, getting a 40 year old unrestored car through the mot always feels like an achievement.

Col
 

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