Hey all.

 

I attempted my first simple mod today, replacing interior lights with LEDs on a MY13 elegance. I used these, which were recommended on another thread. 

 

All seemed OK, but as I was sat in the car I heard a crackling sound (as if coming from the door cards) and the radio dropped signal. Another time the front lights reset and the xenon motors did their thing.

 

My battery low warning light also came up!

 

I've taken the door light LEDs out, but the same happened again. 

 

Now, an interesting caveat is that today is also the first time I had used my OBD11 dongle and each time the dongle was inserted.

 

What might I have done wrong here? I installed LEDs in my MK2 the same way without any issues at all.

 

Thanks in advance 

 

 

 

take them out again and see if the problem remains. Essentially it sounds remarkably like there's some form of electrical brownout in the car's systems happening. So, remove the changes and see what happens. If they are the cause of the brownout, for whatever reason (and they do have some electronics in - there's a pulse sent through the system regularly to see if the door is open. Halogens are too slow to see this, LEDs will, and therefore it's suppressed --> these electronics may not agree with the car) - then you need to replace them.

Surely unplug / remove everything you fitted and see what's causing the issue.  Crackling speakers and light issues clearly isnt normal.  Are the LEDS' the ones from your MK2 or did you buy them new?  I've had varying success over the years with LED number plate / interior bulb swaps but realistically the ammount i've binned due to premature failure, flashing or crap quality etc is fairly substantial.

Cheers both. 

 

I've put the original bulbs back in now. Will clear the fault code and then replace each one at a time to see what triggers the issue.

 

They are new bulbs, not from my MK2. I'm reading conflicting reports on here as to weather the drivers door warning light needs coding as LED or not...perhaps that's an issue.

 

Yes, the crackling sound was very disconcerting!

I've never had issues you faced changing LED's. Even when they were fitted with the wrong polarity, they just didn't light up. 

 

I assume you changed the bulbs with the engine turned off?  

25 minutes ago, BeVe said:

I've never had issues you faced changing LED's. Even when they were fitted with the wrong polarity, they just didn't light up. 

 

I assume you changed the bulbs with the engine turned off?  

 

Yep, engine off. Ignition off. 

 

Lights worked fine until I turned ignition on and then plugged in the OBD11 dongle.

One additional thing: I didn't change all the interior lights, as I was yet to do the glovebox one. 

 

I did read that it might be a case of replacing all bulbs or none, with LEDs, to avoid confusing the system. No idea if there's any truth to that.

Crackling sound from the speakers are normal when you plug in OBD11 dongle and perform a scan. Its the dongle pinging various systems for checks and errors. 

 

If the crackling sounds don't come on when the dongle is not in then I guess you're in the clear? Anyway IIRC, the interior LEDs aren't monitored by canbus. 

23 minutes ago, BeVe said:

Crackling sound from the speakers are normal when you plug in OBD11 dongle and perform a scan. Its the dongle pinging various systems for checks and errors. 

 

If the crackling sounds don't come on when the dongle is not in then I guess you're in the clear? Anyway IIRC, the interior LEDs aren't monitored by canbus. 

 

Cheers.

 

I thought it might be the dongle too, but couldn't find anything after a quick search. I'll explore this more today.

 

Re: canbus. That's what I have read, but there are quite a few posts suggesting that the door warning lights need coding. I'm unsure what is correct. 

 

I've just driven to work with the original light bulbs and sat with the ignition on for a while. No problems thus far. I'll stick the dongle in shortly to see if it's that. 

Plugged the dongle in and I got the crackling sound in the door cards.

 

Definitely OBD11.

45 minutes ago, nutters_uclan said:

Re: canbus. That's what I have read, but there are quite a few posts suggesting that the door warning lights need coding. I'm unsure what is correct.

I've replaced my door warning lights with LED ones, no coding no errors - if you look in the Leuchte channels there is no channel for the interior lights apart from the ambient lighting on FL Octavias.

1 hour ago, PetrolDave said:

I've replaced my door warning lights with LED ones, no coding no errors - if you look in the Leuchte channels there is no channel for the interior lights apart from the ambient lighting on FL Octavias.

Cheers bud. I feel confident enough to put the LEDs back in now I know it was the OBD11 causing the funny sound. It proper **** me up!