Low Beam LED - Bulb Failure Message

Post by **tom39** » 25 Aug 2019, 18:49

2011 Volvo S80 3.2L

I had a standard H11 halogen bulb burn out the other day and instead of just replacing the bulb with another H11 halogen I bought some H11 LED bulbs. The new LED bulbs are 6000k and put off a very nice white light that provide much better night vision compared to the former halogen bulbs. However, the new LED bulbs are causing me an issue in that they signal that there is a blown bulb and I get a "Low Beam Bulb Failure" message on my instrument cluster. My guess is that the new LED bulbs do not pull enough watts and causes the ecu to think that a bulb has blown. For reference, the H11 halogen bulbs were rated at 12vdc @ 55w and the new LED bulbs are rated at 12vdc @ 40W.

Prior to posting this I did do a quick search on the forum to see if I could find a solution but came up empty. (My guess is that I am simply not entering the right key words to populate a search thread for my issue.) So I am posting to see if anyone has had this issue before and if so what they have done to work around it. One thought that I did have was that there may be a way to reconfigure or turn off a feature of one of the ecu's so that it would not run the bulb test or maybe even reconfigure the parameters of the ecu to a lesser value that is closer to what the LED is pulling.

Thanks in advance for your help and assistance,
Tom

Post by **jimmy57** » 25 Aug 2019, 21:48

On lots of vehicles running around with LED or HID bulbs replacing halogen there are resistors or a simple fix of bulbs spliced into the headlight bulb wires. In your case a two wire bulb socket, sold at auto parts stores, with a 15 watt bulb in each and wired to the head light wires. The left low beam is yellow and red wire and the right is blue and green. Ground can be anywhere on chassis or the left ground black and orange and right is black and violet. If you look at the bulb packages to see what bulb is 15 w and buy the bulb sockets that hold them. A 917 bulb that goes in a push in bulb socket, called a T5 base, is 15 watts. they are used as third brake lights and bed lights on back of cab of pickup trucks.

Post by **tom39** » 26 Aug 2019, 19:16

jimmy57 wrote: ↑25 Aug 2019, 21:48 On lots of vehicles running around with LED or HID bulbs replacing halogen there are resistors or a simple fix of bulbs spliced into the headlight bulb wires. In your case a two wire bulb socket, sold at auto parts stores, with a 15 watt bulb in each and wired to the head light wires. The left low beam is yellow and red wire and the right is blue and green. Ground can be anywhere on chassis or the left ground black and orange and right is black and violet. If you look at the bulb packages to see what bulb is 15 w and buy the bulb sockets that hold them. A 917 bulb that goes in a push in bulb socket, called a T5 base, is 15 watts. they are used as third brake lights and bed lights on back of cab of pickup trucks.

Jimmy, thank you for your help. After consideration of your comments I contacted the vendor to see if they had a suggestion. And similar to what you have indicated, they have a cord with male and female connectors that fits in-line with the led bulb. This patch cord has a resistor (simulating the bulb that you describe) in it that creates the additional draw needed. The plus side to all of this is that they gave me a 99% discount and I was able to obtain the needed cords for $0.17 a pair including shipping.

Thank you for your help. I will post the results when the cords come in and I am able to install them.

Tom

Post by **jimmy57** » 26 Aug 2019, 21:09

That sounds great. That is cheap.

Post by **tom39** » 29 Aug 2019, 18:43

The resistance harnesses came in and I was able to install them in less than 15min. Using these harnesses in conjunction with the led bulbs, I no longer get the bulb failure indicator message.
Additionally, I have added links to the bulbs and harnesses I purchased for this job for those who are interested.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079K ... UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BM ... UTF8&psc=1

jca101 · Post by **jca101** » 14 Mar 2020, 12:43

Hire did you get the 99% discount?? $19.99 is not bad but .17cents is better.
I want to try this on my 06 XC70!!

Post by **mrbrian200** » 14 Mar 2020, 14:02

They've been starting to crack down on LED/HID conversions around me where the the resulting light is too intense/blinding to oncoming traffic. A 40w LED would have a lumen output equivalent to a 200W or more halogen bulb (where the OE is designed for legal/safe light output at around 1/4 of that).
The vast majority of these conversion bulbs/kits (coming from Chinese suppliers who don't care whether we live or die--they just want our money) aren't designed to maintain appropriate street safe light output with marketing claims designed to appeal to people unaware of the safety and liability implications of cranking up the light output.

I looked into putting LED conversion bulbs on my S60. But pretty much dropped the idea when I couldn't find any that didn't also substantially increase light output above that which would be considered 'legal and safe' while also incorporating a design that maintains proper focus & beam width.

Be aware if you've put in one of these super bright conversions and an accident occurs that can be even partially attributed to oncoming drivers stating that they were blinded by your headlamps, you could be held at fault even if you weren't actually involved in said accident.