I am pretty dumb when it comes to electrical problems... I upgraded my taillights to LEDs about 1 month ago. I thought everything was working ok. When I got behind my car the other night to see how much of the light was due to reflection, I noticed that my passenger side rear taillights are out when I just have the headlights turned on (the rear side marker still lights up, but the two large bulbs do not).
To make it interesting, I had my wife hit the brakes - the top brake light now will light up, but the bottom one won't.
Now, with just the headlights turned on (brakes off), I turned on the blinker/emergency flashers - now the bottom light will flash, but the other lights are still off?
I checked all of the connections and bulbs, and the bulbs seem to be working fine (as mentioned above, they will all turn on at some point, but won't turn on for the "running lights" function). I took the 3 ohm resistor off of that side, and that did not change anything for me. Interestingly enough, even without the resistor on that side, all of my other led blinkers work fine. (I have switchbacks in the front as well).
If anyone has any ideas, I would greatly appreciate the help. It's a little embarassing to drive around with one tail out....

Jon

 

actually, I did notice that a few of the small led's are out on the two lights in this passenger side...
Is it possible that having those few small led's out could somehow be causing a short?

If so, I guess it is time to trade them in for new ones (I should do that anyway, since I paid $25 per bulb for these things).

 

How bout some pics?

 

Sounds like a bad bulb to me. BTW which bulbs did you buy and where from?

 

You were right!

I had Eagle Eye Towers from autolumination.com in all four of the brake light positions in the two tail assemblies. I went and bought some cheapo sylvanias and pulled out the two bad EET's on the passenger side, and voila!

All problems are now fixed. So now, what I did is I moved one of the EET from the driver side over to the passenger side so that I do not have to take off the resistor. Now everything works perfectly. I gotta say, there is a HUGE difference in the light output. The LL Sylvania bulbs are WAY weaker than those Eagle Eye Tower bulbs are as far as light output...

Anyway, I talked to the people at autolumination and told me to send the bulbs back and they will send me new ones. I am just happy the problem was that easy to fix!

 

I've had my towers in for almost 3 years with no problems, glad it worked out.