Many months ago, I removed my dash instrument fascia panel and updated dash lights with LED's - when I plug in the four wheel drive light indicator into it's harness, the unit starts overheating immediately and starts to smoke! I put a meter on the plug and found 14.81 volts coming in on one of the five sockets! What would I have this much voltage? Bad ground somewhere? My lamp takes 3 bulbs (158's) which each have 3.4 watts - bulbs should be correct, I just can't figure out what is going on with the indicator lamp -any ideas? I would like to have this functioning again as I am selling this '83W250 -Help!

 

153's you can plug in either way, led's are diodes. Diodes allow power to flow only in one direction. You probably have them in wrong.

 

Thanks, but I took out the led's (from the sockets for the wheel drive light indicator) and put the 158 bulbs back in and still got the same result - the other led's are still in the instrument panel and do just fine (no smoking)

 

In that case something is shorted.

 

Thanks, so I guess from here, all I can do is trace that harness to find the short - much appreciated!

 

Apparently, 14.7 volts is fine at the socket that feeds the 4wdrive indicator hub locked light - I think what I have is a bad circuit board. Anyone have one floating around that they wish to sell? Mine is the 3 bulb style, thanks!