inivid

I saw some Sylvania Zevo LED bulbs at Autozone, while picking up a tire pressure gauge, and they garnered my curiosity. So, I picked up a packaged pair that was the equivalent to the OE DRL and swapped them out tonight. The color is a fantastic clean white. However, there is a faint flicker at a rate of once every second. Note, this with the car off. I haven't observed them with the car running yet, as it's late and I'm posting this on my way to bed. I simply wanted to get something posted, with hopes of waking up to some feedback. I also picked up a set to replace the incandescent license plate bulbs, but I am now a bit apprehensive, for fear of the same result.

raj99

Most of the LED bulbs require a resistor for our vehicles to eliminate the flicker effect you've noticed, doesn't take place. The resistors simulate the incandescent OEM bulb wattage so that the onboard computer senses full wattage, since LEDs consume very little power.

inivid

Quick Update: I purchased some resistors from Amazon (http://amzn.com/B00L4V9ECY) and just installed them. HOLY SMOKES do they ever heat up! I had the OE heat wrap from my old 1.8T GTI's coil-pack harness, so I cut it down to size. They wrapped around the resistors and snapped closed perfectly, but I'm not certain that's enough. Used a thermometer to measure the temp for about 10min and it got up to about 260*F. Should I worry?

raj99

260F would concern me. That's more than it takes to make water boil! Do you have heat sinks to help dissipate the heat? Hopefully these aren't close to anything plastic or susceptible to excessive heat.

I thought I read a thread about this same issue...can't find it by using the Search right now, but i'm sure I read it somewhere.

inivid

leaving the DRL option turned off for the time being, then.

inivid

Issue is this: I wasn't getting any fault codes. Only a very, very slow flicker at a rate of one per second. That's it. Is a resistor actually what I need?

The OE bulb is a 21w bulb.
The LED bulb is a 4w self-contained, internally resisted, led array.

inivid

After looking at THIS THREAD, I'm thinking that perhaps either this, or this may be more appropriate.

Thoughts?

Also, given that most automotive plastics are medium- and high-density polyethylene, Wiki states the melting point is in the range of 248 to 356 °F. The temp I recorded was via direct contact with the resistor.

SchwarzS6

The 30 watt resistor is what you need but it should be screwed to a metal surface to help dissipate the heat. If you attach it to plastic or if it comes into contact with plastic it will probably melt or deform the plastic and, worst case, it could cause a fire.

inivid

As of now, neither are attached to anything. They are hanging by the eyelet on the back of the headlight housing by one of the leads. They are also encased in a wiring harness heat shield that I had from my old 1.8T (heat wrap from the top of the cylinder head, that protected the coil pack wiring harness). There were 4 snaps on it, so I cut it in half, placed the reflective coating towards the resistor on each and snapped them shut. It's a good snug fit.

SchwarzS6

By insulating the resistors that way they will get even hotter and may fail sooner or start a fire. Those resistors have fins so that they can dissipate heat due to air convection. Enclosing them kind of defeats the purpose.