eteller

A recent foray into diagnosing a rattle got me into thinking in might be nice to replace my dome lights with LED's. Do I need CANBUS ones or will normal ones work and not throw an error?

beejAMG

nope. interior lights are not connected to the sam so it wont throw any errors.

AZN Optics

Although they won't throw errors, due to the fact that bare LEDs don't require much power to light up, if you don't throw resistors on them, you might get some light bleed with current leak or residual energized wires.

eteller

Thanks guys, so maybe someone who has swapped to LED in a w209 can chime in on the potential bleed issue.

beejAMG

im no expert but had them on my W209, W211, R170 and now on my W212, C207. never had an issue whatsoever.

NewShockerGuy

Did the entire interior with LEDS. Zero issues. The ONLY thing I was annoyed with were the door puddle lights. At night, when the headlights are on you could slightly see light bleeding into the car from the puddle lights. This would probably be non existent if one used canbus style leds for the door puddle lights.


I ran into the same exact problem on our w211, and as soon as I changed out the door lights with canbus style ones light no longer bled through. My wife never noticed the light coming through and it was VERY minimal but it did annoy me.


Zero issues with the front dome/rear dome, map lights, or glove box, or trunk when they were LED.


-Nigel

eteller

Thanks guys, I will proceed then starting with the dome lights.

sailorben

Notice when you're doing it, that in the dome are two plastic shades that may well fall out when you take the covers off the map lights. I left mine out, since I couldn't figure out how they were supposed to sit inside properly. Does mean that now there can be a little direct shine into the eye when it's on.

Whilst I like my interior a crisp white led. It goes well with the black leather and aluminium trim, I do quite like the factory Amber glow. It's classier,never though a tad dim.

The new LEDs are far too bright also. However it's more hassle than it's worth swapping the out til I find one that's the right brightness.

AZN Optics

Many of our customers opt for a hybrid solution... Replacing only those sections where you want torch mode as bright as possible such as map lights, trunk, glove box, door puddle, etc while leaving the more ambient level ones alone.