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Driver side Parking & side marker lights

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by electrode, Apr 10, 2015.

  1. electrode

    electrode Junior Member

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    My apologies for asking this, I read the manual but want to make sure I did not miss it. My driver side parking and side marker lights are out. Looked at the parking light, it doesn't look burned from the outside, wondering if there is a fuse for these lights that might have blown. The manual looks to mention fuses for many things but I failed to see one for these lights.

    If I am to replace it, I am thinking (ok, fantasizing) of LEDs -- are there any good brands that will fit and not melt the housing and my wallet?

    I know technically LEDs produce less heat, but household lights seem to need large heatsinks because heat dissipation is an issue with LEDs, many people seem to be worried about this. Also some claim the need for added resistor. Amazon has a JDM Astar PX line which claims it will not cause faults to trigger. Autozone also sells some unknown brand LEDs.
     
    #1 electrode, Apr 10, 2015
  2. xliderider

    xliderider Senior Member

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    You don't need to worry about adding a resistor, because these lights aren't associated with the turn signals. Therefore, no hyper flashing.
     
    #2 xliderider, Apr 10, 2015
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  3. electrode

    electrode Junior Member

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    Thanks, that is good to know. I am also fishing for recommendation on which LEDs/brand to buy. Any reviews on JDM Astar (Amazon showed that brand as the first, but looking around everybody on Amazon ends up saying something to the effect of "we are the only genuine seller of this brand")?

    For JDM Astar, Amazon has 65 reviews, mostly positive -- but a search on prius chat did not seem to turn up anyone using them. It also appears that the JDM name has been used to associate themselves with 'Japanese Domestic Market', which seems to get high marks around here.
     
    #3 electrode, Apr 10, 2015
  4. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    There are some things to think about when replacing original lighting with LEDs on the PriusChat wiki. The page I linked is about the Gen 1, but that only means the part #s and bulb specs won't be right for your car, all the things to think about still hold. You can also use the toyodiy and Don's links on that page to find the specific information for your car. Because these aren't just interior lights where nobody cares what you do, but part of the highway-safety specified lighting for the car, it's good to be extra careful that whatever you change will still have the right characteristics.

    About resistors, there are two cases that can be confused here. Light-emitting diodes don't limit their own current, so there's a resistor (or active regulator) that's always required for that, but it's usually built right in to anything that's sold as a 12 V bulb replacement. For some uses, you might want to find out from the seller whether it's a regulator or just a passive resistor (or even a bare LED for some uses where you'd want to control the current yourself).

    Then there's a whole separate question when you're replacing a bulb that blinks and the LED won't draw enough current for the blinker to work right, and for those cases you might use another resistor just to waste extra current so the blinker works. That's the resistor xliderider was saying you don't need, because you're not dealing with a blinker.

    More detail on all those points is in the wiki page I linked.

    -Chap
     
    #4 ChapmanF, Apr 10, 2015
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  5. electrode

    electrode Junior Member

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    After reading through, I decided to stick to regular bulbs (yeah, I hear the cluck cluck). I changed the parking lights, but was unable to reach in for the side marker lights (will give it another try this weekend).

    I was also unable to budge the license plate lights, anybody have this problem? How did you fix it? The license plate light assembly looks like very finicky plastic, so I was a bit hesitant to use any metal tools.
     
    #5 electrode, Apr 13, 2015
  6. bigmike98208

    bigmike98208 Junior Member

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    for the license plate lights I just popped the plastic covers off from the inside of the hatch door with a small flat screw driver. There's a notch to insert it. Then just twisted and pulled the connectors out and then pulled the bulbs out with my fingers.

    I just replaced my cheap e-bay LED's with JDM Astars. They're a lot brighter but we'll see if they start blinking like the cheap ones.
     
    #6 bigmike98208, Jun 10, 2015
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