Automotive Electrical Issue

[rjjammer]

Merry Christmas Venture family!

 

Is it possible to get some technical advice from the electrical gurus here, I own a 08 Cadillac SRX, it has one quirk that can not seem to be solved even at the dealer! The daytime running light bulbs will burn out repeatedly . Sometimes within a week of replacing them. When that happens the signal lights will flash fast and the rear LED taillights will do all kinds of weird things. I just replaced the bulbs last week and they went out again. Both rear taillights will flash when I turn on the right or left signal and the brakes are applied. The systems are all tied together in the computer and all the research tells me its the cars way of telling me the bulbs are burned out. I have changed the bulb sockets as suggested by GM replaced the bulbs cleaned and checked the sockets and plugs. All the other lights are operational.

 

To change the bulbs one has to remove the front wheels and take the complete inner fender off to get at the housing for the bulbs. To do both sides it can take a couple of hours. who in the world designed this?

 

On to my question, can I replace these bulbs with a LED and hook some kind of resistor inline to fool the computer into believing it has a incandescent bulb in it? Kind of like the battery probe mod on my 1st gen? How would I find the right resistor to use ? From what I have found online the bulbs get hot, and the sockets get hard and cause a bad connection, high resistance and the element will burn out. I am not sure if the DRLs can be disabled and have everything else work as it should. Im at a loss. I wanted to sell the car but I sure would feel bad if a new owner had the problem and it caused a wreck because of the signal lights. Any ideas?

[slowrollwv]

I let my son read this post and he said it is the module that controls the lights under the dash is bad.

[MikeWa]

Sounds like a bad light module or BCM.

 

Mike

[Flyinfool]

It does sound like a module. a burned out bulb should not disable or mess up any other lights, that is a MAJOR safety issue.

One very important thing is that the new bulb Must be clean. One fingerprint or even a smudge of dirt or oil will cause an early burn out.

Clean the bulbs with alcohol and a clean cloth before installation and then make sure NOTHING touches the bulb while putting it in.

[rjjammer]

Well it looks like I found the problem. It wasn't the light module, or the computer. I had the car put on a scanner at a friends shop and could find nothing wrong. No errors and everything worked like it is supposed to. Driving it home from the shop it was working fine but halfway home it started acting up again. The roads were wet with melting snow. Then it hit me it always happened when it was wet. When I got home I did some checking for water in the lights etc. Then I found it. The previous owner installed an aftermarket trailer hitch and plug. The plug was wrapped around the hitch and looped through the safety chain bracket. The green and yellow wires were rubbed through slightly and the factory harness underneath is cut and cobbled together. Seems when it was wet and I applied the brake it would cause the problem. I removed the trailer plug and patched the harness. Test drove it on wet roads and all is good. The only thing confusing is why the fuses didn't blow? I was always going to remove and redo the trailer plug when I bought the car but never got around to it. I guess I should have fixed it before it caused issues. Thanks all for the advice.