LED Light Bulb Install (Taillights and Reverse Lights)
Well, finally got the time and the correct bulbs, so now the whole back end of my Jeep is LEDs! And it looks really nice! I followed the install guidance of KevinMac's build, as well as jsmorris's LED taillight and reverse light install. However, I cannot make exact references to these posts, as they were on a different forum, and I believe that would violate Wayalife code, so correct me if I am wrong, and I will post those, but to respect the forum to the best of my ability, I will not post the exact location of those, and I will do my best to describe the entire process and steps that I gathered between the two posts in this single post). These two gave me all the information that I needed and they worked great!
So, to start off, the bulbs that I purchased can be seen above in a bit more detail with there links, but the number replacement bulb you will need is one that fits in a 3157 for both the taillights and the reverse lights. I purchased my Brake/Taillight dual function LED towers from SuperBrightLEDS, as well as the needed load resistors to prevent the hyperflash low voltage warning. As the LED's draw so little power, the CAN Bus system thinks the light is out, so the resistor fakes an OK signal back to the CAN Bus that all is fine back there. Now, the bulbs will work/function without the resistor just fine, there is no issue getting them lite and using all the functions, so if you can stand the hyper flash, or it doesn't bother you at all, then you don't need the resistors, i just light everything to be functioning properly, so I went ahead and did it, and they are not too hard to install either. The bulbs were $19.99 a piece, and the resisters were $4.95 a piece.
And then I also purchased reverse LED towers with high powered projector LEDs on the ends from eBay. I got the ones with the projector end as I am hoping to throw a bit more usable light out when I hit reverse, as well as get the nice, clean LED light out there as well! I got a set of 2 "bulbs" for about $17.50 on eBay, and since there is not hyperflash or anything like that, these so these do not need resistors.
My impression of these bulbs is very good! They are solid, substantial, and they are bigger than I thought they would be from the picture! And as a plus, they are also waterproof, and virtually, I should never need to replace one for the rest of the life of the bulb! So I am very excited for these! Plus, i am hoping for a bit more light and faster response time from the light output, for safety, as well as to compensate for the smoked taillight housings which dim the light output anyways!
So, for the installation, you first need to remove the taillight housing. This is done by removing the two screws from the front of the housing towards the inside of the Jeep, not the two outside ones. The driver side taillight is shown, but for the passenger side, it is just flipped.
Once those two screws are removed, you then shift the housing slightly to the inside of the Jeep, and then they pull straight out. Once you have the housing out, you then have all the access to the bulbs that you need! First, I went for the reverse light install, as these did not require any special modifications. You just twist the bulb socket counter clockwise and then then you pull the bulb straight out. You then grab the bulb, and it is secured in the socket much better than I though it would be, so you will have to give it a good tug/pull, but it will come out. You then grab you new LED Projector bulb, and insert the bulb in the same way the other came out! (Before the next step, make sure you put the parking brake on all the way, as well as put something behind one of the tires to prevent the Jeep from rolling, or have someone go stand on the brake. As you can see, I did the parking brake and a big chunk of wood behind my rear tire and my Jeep did not move) However, before you insert the bulb back into the housing, go put the Jeep in gear to check and make sure that the light is actually working, as with these LED bulbs, they need to be sitting properly to work, so if the bulb does not light all the LEDs (as mine the first time only lite the projector, not the surrounding LEDs) pull the bulb back out, rotate it 180*, and reinsert the bulb, and it should then be functioning just fine. And once you have checked the new bulb and all is working, go ahead and insert the bulb through the hole in the housing, and line up the tabs on the socket with the housing, and push in and rotate clockwise until the socket is tight to the housing. Here are some before and after pics of the reverse lights:
Before:
Comparison (Left LED, right stock):
Before:
After:
Comparison between stock output (farther side) and LED output (Closer side), the difference is even in bigger in person! I am lovin' them!
So once those were done, I moved onto the brake/taillights. These required a bit more work, but not too much! First of all, I had to find a good location to secure the resistor and provide a heat sink for it as well, on the driver side, I used one of the panels inside the taillight hole which had a bigger hole through it to allow me to zip-tie the resistor to it, however, on the passenger side, I have not found anything good enough still to attach to with just zip-ties,so currently it is zip-tied to the wiring harness, but not right against it so it does not bounce around and shake something loose, but I do not want any wires melted either, so it is sort of sitting in space and the moment and I am still looking for a good solution that doe snot involve drilling the metal. But here are the pics of the resistor on the drivers side:
So with the resistor secured, I then needed to tap in with the wire splices into the proper wires to allow for the proper signal to be sent back to through the CAN Bus to throw no errors. For the two wires coming out of the resistor at either end, it does not matter which end you connect to which wire, as long as one is attached to one wire, and one to the other. So for me, for both the driver's side and passenger's side, I had to connect one end of the resistor to the black wire which was going to the taillight bulb (Note which bulb socket the wires are going to as once I did both splices and then realized I had the housing upside down and I spliced the reverse light on accident and I had to go back and redo the splices) and the other end of the resistor went to the white or off-white wire with the yellow stripe on it. This was for both taillights. And from my understanding, this is the wire which allows the brighter function of the taillight (i.e. The brake and indicator) because the running light functions fine and will not through a warning code, only the brighter functions. If that was unclear, let me know and I can explain that better! The White with purple stripe to my understanding is for the running lights when you turn the lights on. He is a picture of the splices, which after I took the pic, I then wrapped in electrical tape for an extra secure hold:
As an extra note with these splices though, I had an issue with the drivers side one, that before I actually finished the splices, I inserted the taillight/Brake light bulbs and checked the hyper flash issue to see if it happened. It seems that when the Jeep is turned on and then the turn signal is turned on, it takes 6 flashed before the CAN Bus realizes the voltage is too low on the bulb, so make sure you let it flash more than 8 times! I counted somewhere between 10-15 flashes to be sure! I had an issue with the driver side splice which was that the metal part of the splice that actually cuts through the wire cover and taps into the actual wires underneath did not cut far enough through the coating on the black wire. So I had to open up the splice again, and I took a pair of needle nose pliers and clamped the splice all the way in, and tested again, and then that worked. So, if using these splices in the future, I would recommend using something directly on the splice to clamp through the coating, and then actually close the cover of the splice.
So with everything functioning properly, I inserted the bulb back into the housing, tightened the socket back to the housing, and re-secured the housing! The entire install took about an hour to an hour and a half, and probably would have been quicker if I wouldn't have had my few hiccups, but even those were no big problem! Here are some comparison pics of the taillights (but I apologize as it is really difficult to get pictures of light as the camera wants to adjust to the light):
Stock bulbs:
LEDs:
Comparison between LEDs on left, stocks on right, with just the running lights:
Comparison between LEDs on left, stocks on right, with the brakes applied:
Now in these pics, like I said, it is hard to tell the differences in the taillights, however, from being here in person, these are a good bit brighter in output than the stock bulbs! They have instant response time and they absolutely make up for the smoked housing in brightness! These are even brighter by far in the daylight as well! There is very little light wasted, and even the side markers on the sides of the taillights are much brighter! I will put together a small video of the lights, where you can really see the difference soon, and then I will post it up here, but I am 110% impressed with these lights, and they are far better than I expected them to be! I am very happy and would recommend doing this for others!
Let me know if you have any questions about this, or I am sure KevinMac and jsmorris could also help on this! And on a side note, if anyone needs any stock bulbs, I have a license plate bulb, and two brake light bulbs and two reverse light bulbs with not too much use on em as my Jeep still only has 31k miles on it! I would sell em off for really cheap if anybody wants them!
Well, once I get the chance to install, I will post up my pics of the before and after as well as the install process, and maybe a video on these too! Stay tuned! 
