I have a 2011 big horn dakota and i've been trying to install led tail light bulbs, not whole housings. i tried led bulbs from an auto parts store and even bought the resistors and installed them. i didn't get rapid flash, they just didn't function. the led bulbs would flicker then stay on after i turned the lights off. so i returned those and bought some better bulbs from carid that claim the lumen bulbs were can/bus compatible. they did the same thing. i don't really want to replace the whole tail light i just want to swap the bulbs because they're visible through the tail light housing. is there an underlying issue with my truck thats making it hard to install these bulbs or am i doing something else wrong?

i think i'm going to try the lumen plasma bulbs and maybe a resistor or flash controller again.

 

I could never get LED bulbs to work in my tails or signals, with or without resisters, just could never get them to work properly. I dunno. I just gave up.

 

Is it really worth the hassle for a bit of brightness in the tail lights?

 

I know you guys are talking LEDs for Dakota, I have a 2007 Ram 2500. The right tail light is out. Blinker is out, brake is out, only thing that works is the running light. So are you recommending to stay with the incandescent bulb rather than LED?

 

 

i put LED's throughout my house since it saved me money. figure the Dakota will still drink gas regardless of what bulbs I use

 

The LED, "Light Emitting Diode", is a diode. A "diode" is equivalent of an electrical check valve. With this, know that LED are one way electrical flow. They will not light if the pos-neg are not correct (connected backwards).

The standard incandescent bulb does not care which wire is -ve or +ve. It is just a filament and will flow either way.

When the trucks are designed and built there may be some components that are wired a specific way and other components that are wired as whatever out of convenience. So it may be such a case with the taillights on the Dakota.

In other words, the issue with the LED not work is most likely an issue with the light socket on the truck, not the LED bulb itself. It may be on the tail lights the contacts are reversed or just whatevers. (+ve / -ve). You could test the LED bulbs out of the truck using some scrap wire and direct connect a battery. If they work on the test but not in the truck, then it may be just a matter of reversing the wires polarity at the plug connector on the truck. Worth a try if you have everything in hand and are determined to figure it out and get LED to work. Or just put regular bulbs in.

Hope that helps!

 

Thanks, guys. We also replaced all lights in our house with LED and we are pretty happy with the brightness. I was hoping to do the same with the truck but I went ahead and stuck with the "old" lights.

 

I have a 2005 Dakota, had the same problems trying to change over to LEDs. I finally gave up too. But I think I'll try again, reversing the wires. Had problems putting HID headlights in too. Finally got them to work good, but they don't work the way they should. They come on with the light switch, but won't go off till I shut off the ignition key.