LED brake lights slowly draining battery

04svtsnke

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my wife has a 08 GT that has some LED brake lights that stay partially on when the car is turned off. We’ve been having battery drain issues for a few months now and I noticed they were on but very dim when everything was turned off. Any idea what the problem could be? The lights still come on and off when the brake pedal is pressed. Thanks in advance for your help.
 

04svtsnke

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it's called a short .. you need to find it and eliminate it
They’re not fully on though. It looks like the smaller lights are staying on but the larger ones that come on when I press in the brake pedal come on only when the I depress it. I’ll check for shorts.
 

RDJ

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They’re not fully on though. It looks like the smaller lights are staying on but the larger ones that come on when I press in the brake pedal come on only when the I depress it. I’ll check for shorts.
they do not have to be fully on for it to be a short. a fair number of shorts are incomplete, in other words they touch just enough to create a problem but not enough to fully engage the entire circuit.
 

04svtsnke

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they do not have to be fully on for it to be a short. a fair number of shorts are incomplete, in other words they touch just enough to create a problem but not enough to fully engage the entire circuit.
Gotcha. Thank you for the help guys.
 

Robert M

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my wife has a 08 GT that has some LED brake lights that stay partially on when the car is turned off. We’ve been having battery drain issues for a few months now and I noticed they were on but very dim when everything was turned off. Any idea what the problem could be? The lights still come on and off when the brake pedal is pressed. Thanks in advance for your help.

I had the same problem with my 2008 GT500, except it was the reverse lights. The solution was not to dig into finding a short in your electrical system, because it is the body lighting module (BLM) that is lighting that low resistance LED. The resistance in a incandescent bulb is greater and it takes more current flow to light it, there is always voltage at those bulbs from the BLM, but not enough to light the incandescent filament. The solution is to buy a CANBUS LED bulb for that location. The CANBUS LED's have a resistor built into their circuitry and provide the amount of resistance (similar to the OE bulb) and do not allow the LED to light under normal "key-off" conditions, just like the original incandescent bulb.

I have CANBUS LED's in several locations on my 2008 where the non-CANBUS LED's would stay dimly light.

I used Super Bright brand CANBUS LED's and have had no issues since, that was 4+ years ago and my car is completely LED'ed except for the HID headlights.

SuperBrightleds.com is the website I think, look for the CANBUS LED's under your specific application, they work.

Also remember, use the correct color LED, RED behind a Red lens etc., otherwise the LED light gets a washed out look to it from the outward appearance.

R
 

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