Replacing LS430 brake lights for LED's

[The-Acre]

After another member saying how easy it is to replace the centre brake light I thought I would have a go at replacing mine with an LED, so I bought extra ones to replace the other brake light bulbs.  After giving up trying to find where the bulbs are I googled it only to find the facelift has LED's already!  But, here's the scary part, apparently if they fail you have to replace the whole unit!😱

[royoftherovers]

1 minute ago, The-Acre said:

After another member saying how easy it is to replace the centre brake light I thought I would have a go at replacing mine with an LED, so I bought extra ones to replace the other brake light bulbs.  After giving up trying to find where the bulbs are I googled it only to find the facelift has LED's already!  But, here's the scary part, apparently if they fail you have to replace the whole unit!😱

And if you do not ,then that`s an MOT fail,I think.

[The-Acre]

6 minutes ago, royoftherovers said:

And if you do not ,then that`s an MOT fail,I think.

Correct, as it doesn't have two brake light bulbs as the earlier LS430 has.  So now I have some very nice spare LED bulbs, so it looks like my wife will be wearing some unusual looking earrings!

[JeffL]

Funny that this conversation should come up today. On Tuesday of this week I was getting a quote for having my bonnet resprayed and during the conversation the guy was saying that in his opinion, old cars are the best (mine's 12 years old this year). He's not keen on a lot of the sophisticated and complex gadgets and fixed/sealed units on new cars. A friend of his runs a garage and a customer's car failed its MOT due to a faulty tail light.  It was an LED unit, no bulbs. Cost for a new unit? £750!  Turns out the small car with a high mileage was only worth about £1,000 and the poor guy, was in fact poor, couldn't afford £750, couldn't find a replacement in a scrap yard so his only means of transport was scrapped! If true, I find that to be shockingly immoral. 

Phil, how much did you have to pay for a new unit?

[The-Acre]

21 minutes ago, JeffL said:

Funny that this conversation should come up today. On Tuesday of this week I was getting a quote for having my bonnet resprayed and during the conversation the guy was saying that in his opinion, old cars are the best (mine's 12 years old this year). He's not keen on a lot of the sophisticated and complex gadgets and fixed/sealed units on new cars. A friend of his runs a garage and a customer's car failed its MOT due to a faulty tail light.  It was an LED unit, no bulbs. Cost for a new unit? £750!  Turns out the small car with a high mileage was only worth about £1,000 and the poor guy, was in fact poor, couldn't afford £750, couldn't find a replacement in a scrap yard so his only means of transport was scrapped! If true, I find that to be shockingly immoral. 

Phil, how much did you have to pay for a new unit?

Thankfully my newly discovered LED's are ok, I was just planning to change the original bulbs for LED replacements... if I had them!   I believe there is info out there re soldering new ones in place should they fail.

[The-Acre]

And not such a bad thing replacing my existing centre brake light (which is a normal bulb) with the LED as the old bulb was very dark.

 

[Cotswold Pete]

15 hours ago, JeffL said:

 If true, I find that to be shockingly immoral.

Agree, and it is odd that the world and his wife are talking about repair and recycle, when the manufatcturers are saying, making a serviceable unit is more expensive than a fixed unit.

No different (I suppose) to when we had valve radios when a valve blew you replaced the valve, same with discrete transistors, nowadays a DAB radio is more than likely to have a special chip set which if that fails after a period of 10 years, your chances of being able to source the specific chip is rare.

The very reason why Morris Minors will still be running (assuming petrol still for sale) in 50 years time, where as a LS500 might just be a musuem piece (as well might be a Nissan Leaf).

Progress is not always progress, just change

[BigBoomer]

18 hours ago, The-Acre said:

After another member saying how easy it is to replace the centre brake light I thought I would have a go at replacing mine with an LED, so I bought extra ones to replace the other brake light bulbs.  After giving up trying to find where the bulbs are I googled it only to find the facelift has LED's already!  But, here's the scary part, apparently if they fail you have to replace the whole unit!😱

It depends on how they fail.
If one LED or one row of LEDs fail, then you are still OK, but will get an MOT advisory.
If an entire cluster fails, then yes it's an MOT failure.
Someone on the US site fixed his but it's quite an involved job.
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls-3rd-gen-2001-2006/894213-led-taillight-repair.html

[cruisermark]

Phil how sure are you that the rest cluster is LED? - I’ve always liked the blink rate on the BMW and Audi cars and have wondered if I could achieve that instantaneous blink by upgrading the bulbs 

[The-Acre]

7 hours ago, cruisermark said:

Phil how sure are you that the rest cluster is LED? - I’ve always liked the blink rate on the BMW and Audi cars and have wondered if I could achieve that instantaneous blink by upgrading the bulbs 

I looked for the bulbs but all I could find was the indicators.  I looked online to find out how I access them, only to discover the facelift has LED units.  To remove them there seems to be 3 X 11mm nuts, but like everything else Lexus they're not easy to get to without removing various bits of trim.

[cruisermark]

11 hours ago, The-Acre said:

I looked for the bulbs but all I could find was the indicators.  I looked online to find out how I access them, only to discover the facelift has LED units.  To remove them there seems to be 3 X 11mm nuts, but like everything else Lexus they're not easy to get to without removing various bits of trim.

Wow! - We have often said on this forum that the LS430 was ahead of its time but to have LEDs is amazing - reliable they are too!