I fitted 'good' LED running lights a while back. Ones recommended for use in our cars so that we don't need resistors - believe that if you like. Mine still throw up the error. I've lived with this for a while with the resistors out of circuit. Mainly due to the VERY hot, 145°C, temperature that they get to. I was wandering if we have any experts here that have fitted LEDs that firstly, have not shown errors and secondly, of resistors have been fitted, how hot have they been. I've fitted mine to the internals of the wings to stay away from anything that would be affected by the heat and used high temperature wire to connect everything. I'm used to working with electronics by I'm also used to hear dissipation by fan or something else to keep the resistors 'safe'. Any thoughts folks?

I'm assuming that you're using the 5 or 10 ohm 20 watt resistor units.

 

In my opinion (based on experience), the cars don't monitor current so adding a load to increase the current up to the 16 or 21 watts isn't required.

 

Try a 330R instead of the big arse ones.  At 14V that's 420mW so a 1 watt resistor should be fine.  

 

You may find that is enough to fool the car into thinking it has a linear load instead of a semiconductor.  It's worked for me in the past (on a 2007 VW A-platform which is more or less the same generation hardware as the 3T Superb).

 

Naturally if the LED fails and the resistor doesn't you won't get a bulb-out warning.

Using recommended 6 ohm but, 50 Watts to dissipate heat better. The wattage on these power resistors is their rating not power consumption. Obviously, 12 volt divided by 6 ohms will be 2 amps regardless of power rating. Hate to think what heat the smaller 21 watt ones will give. They are the ones I was told to order by ABD. Interesting that you are using 320. I thought going by what I was told they had a specific current that the CANBUS was looking for. I'll try 320 and see what happens. Thanks.

I installed these in-line resisters on my running lights, not had an issue :

 

http://sklep.motohid.pl/pl/p/Adapter-Kasownik-do-LED-DRL-Octavia-2-FL%2C-Superb%2C-Passat-STANDARD/1687

On a 2013 car, the BCM should naively support LED DRL. It just needs recoding by someone with VCP or ODIS-e...

 

I think even OBDeleven might be able to do this but I'm away wary of it's guided functions as it's impossible to know what they've actually changed,

Thanks for all the input. Thanks to 'wokwon' for the suggestion of the 330ohm 1watt. I upped the ohms to 390 and 1watt just to see, and they work. No more heat issues. Can't understand now why we are being advised to use such dangerously hot resistors. Seems like suppliers of the resistors haven't thought things through. Anyway, my problem solved!

13 hours ago, Dougalkerr said:

Can't understand now why we are being advised to use such dangerously hot resistors. Seems like suppliers of the resistors haven't thought things through.

 

Because they are trying to copy the power usage of a 21W bulb so it'll create ~21W of heat...?

 

A 390ohm resistor will consume about half a watt which is why it's much cooler, it might not fool all bulb monitoring systems though

1 hour ago, langers2k said:

 

Because they are trying to copy the power usage of a 21W bulb so it'll create ~21W of heat...?

 

A 390ohm resistor will consume about half a watt which is why it's much cooler, it might not fool all bulb monitoring systems though

Yes, I know. I am familiar with electronics. So, if the higher value resistors are working then it is not the power output that the system is monitoring. Most likely as has been mentioned already, a linear load.

10 hours ago, Dougalkerr said:

Most likely as has been mentioned already, a linear load.

 

It's certainly possible that's how it's done on this generation of VAG vehicle, but you can't extrapolate that to other generations or different makes of vehicle... You'll probably find it varies slightly between BCM hardware and software versions too.

 

For a truly 'universal' solution the simplest is to emulate a halogen bulb as closely as possible, hence the larger power draw. Most adverts I've seen mention the resistors will get hot and should be attached to metal 😕

 

Stiil - my preferred method is recoding the BCM to expect LED's so no load resistors are required 😁

Yes, I totally agree.