3157 LED replacement help! - may have fried the battery .. please assist

[centexXLR]

Hey guys - I am relatively new to XLR family ... anyway I had a couple of burnt out bulbs and i decided I might as well replace them with LEDs while I was at it. Anyway after doing research (apparently not enough) I ended up getting these

https://www.theretrofitsource.com/morimoto-xb-led-3157-bulbs.html#.VovfdBUrKhc (both CK and Non CK - wasnt sure what the difference was - figured i would try both if one didnt work. Started with the CK ones and left them in when starting ....

So I put them in .. and started her up ... bulbs worked fine ... .well the turn signals worked. (In retrospect the dtr lights did not) so I figured I was good. Lowered the car, put the wheels on and went to start her again and nothing .. the car started flashing all sorts of warning signals, stuff going on and off etc. Now I know the XLR is sensitive to battery issues. So my question - did these bulbs cause a potential drain or some how mess with the electrical in the car to fry the battery. Also know the car had been sitting in a garage for two weeks as I work some of the kinks out of it (exhaust, detailing etc)....but it started right up even with the new bulbs in .. .however it was just for 30 seconds.. I am a little lost. I took the new led bulbs out again last night and have a trickle charge on it now .. do I need a new battery? I will also check the key fob tonight when I have access to it. I put the key fob in the glove box though to start and was getting the same errors as above ...anyway please let me know what you think. Thanks everyone.

 

[pure zen]

centex,,,, I can't answer your question, but I hope somebody can lead you in the right direction to figure out this situation.

I'm beginning to think that $15K XLR 'auction buy' wasn't a good deal,,, after all of the posts you've made....... Hope things start going better for you in 2016!

Good luck...

 

[centexXLR]

centex,,,, I can't answer your question, but I hope somebody can lead you in the right direction to figure out this situation.

I'm beginning to think that $15K XLR 'auction buy' wasn't a good deal,,, after all of the posts you've made....... Hope things start going better for you in 2016!

Good luck...

I hear you - but my questions are all around upgrades - and after doing research I think the battery issue is what is causing the car to act up. Since it has been bought the car it has been sitting in a garage and only started and ran for 30-40 seconds a time about 2-3 times a week. I believe I left a dome light on when working on it last so that may have been what caused a drain - that or when I changed the lights out I put it in aux mode several times to see if they worked.... im sure it was enough to throw the battery off charge. I will update this post tonight when I have time to look at things again and change the FOB battery as well as charge the main. I;m just not sure if the battery is fried.....

 

[David_B]

I have a Motorcycle that sits over the winter.

A long time ago I decided it wasn't worth messing around with a battery, so even though I put it on a battery tender over the winter I buy a new battery every 3 years.

I'm probably going to do the same thing with my XLR.

It's just not worth the hassle to get 2 more years out of a battery that could leave me high and dry somewhere.

 

[centexXLR]

.. agreed ... unfortunately I have no way of knowing how old the battery that is in there is, it looks spotless under the hood .. literally like a brand new car ... so very hard to tell. Hopefully the 2amp trickle will do the trick and it will start tonight. I will update if it worked.

 

[Stella]

Not knowing if their are previous problems I would think from your explanation that your battery is on it's way out or deeply drained. Just leaving the car untouched without a tender for long periods could drain some. These cars are prone to do weird things with a low battery.
Changing out your bulbs shouldn't do anything like what you experiencing. Now putting the wrong bulbs might short the new bulb,pop fuses,melt your socket or lenses? I would be confident of what bulbs are compatible so you don't run into any problems. There is a lot of info here on the site of conversions to led. Use the search and good luck with your problems.

 

[Stella]

.. agreed ... unfortunately I have no way of knowing how old the battery that is in there is, it looks spotless under the hood .. literally like a brand new car ... so very hard to tell. Hopefully the 2amp trickle will do the trick and it will start tonight. I will update if it worked.

Look on the stickers on the battery. Somewhere most likely in small print there's gonna be a date which will give you a guestamet of when it was replaced. To check battery condition charge fully. Check voltage with a meter. Can let sit for a couple days and check voltage again shouldn't have dropped maybe a point is acceptable. That will tell if the battery holds a charge. The best way is load test which tells if the battery can take a load and operate. Which if you bring your battery to your local auto parts store they can do usually for free.
A trickle charger will not charge a discharged battery. It will only maintain a batteries voltage, or minor charging. All batteries are different but some need at least 10-13amps to do anything. A voltage meter would help you with your diagnosing of the problem

 

[XLRATING]

Have you tried taking the bulbs back out to see what happens?

We just switched out to Xenon fog lights on my CTS coupe & per our research & info from others, had to add on "error cancellers" (CANBus/ballasts) so the car wouldn't throw codes. Couldn't just throw in new bulbs without doing all that. That might be your problem.

You need to exercise care & not just randomly add or change anything connected to electronics on these cars. I know someone who replaced his interior lights with LED's & his trunk started randomly opening. Best they could figure was a strand of hair got caught in the bulb & caused the problem. Bottom line is these cars are REALLY sensitive electronically.

 

[ccclarke]

I hear you - but my questions are all around upgrades - and after doing research I think the battery issue is what is causing the car to act up. Since it has been bought the car it has been sitting in a garage and only started and ran for 30-40 seconds a time about 2-3 times a week. I believe I left a dome light on when working on it last so that may have been what caused a drain - that or when I changed the lights out I put it in aux mode several times to see if they worked.... im sure it was enough to throw the battery off charge. I will update this post tonight when I have time to look at things again and change the FOB battery as well as charge the main. I;m just not sure if the battery is fried.....

The amount of energy required by the battery to start the car will not be replenished with 30-40 seconds of run time. You'll be lucky to raise the top more than three to five times without severely draining the battery with the ignition off.

LED swaps have been covered very well in the Technical forum. Search is your friend. The same goes for batteries (much more so, actually.)

First, get the battery situation squared away, then tackle the LED mods. LEDs use a lot less power than incandescent bulbs. I doubt they did any damage to the battery; --Even if they internally shorted due to a polarity issue, a fuse should have protected the affected electrical system.

CCC

 

[rexster314]

Knowing firsthand how long a stock battery will last while you're futzing around with the doors open and or trunk/hood open with the lights on, you're running the battery down while doing all this. No amount of 30-40 second start/stops will effectively recharge that battery. Before I put in that fire breathing Odyssey battery, the stock battery wouldn't last more than 4 days without going down enough to require a battery charge before starting up. I got in the habit of taking the X out every 2 days and driving about 4-5 miles to keep the battery up.

 

[centexXLR]

Thanks everyone for your advice -- UPDATE :: it was in fact the battery .. took it to autozone to get it diagnosed and it was dead dead dead .. not able to hold a charge. After my initial post I spoke with my father and it turns out he had been raising the top up and down to show people .. lol .. So yeah the battery got drained. Once a new one was put in it started right up. On a separate note - the bulbs are working GREAT .. the switch backs that i linked above dont work exactly as they are suppose to - (they are suppose to run white while turned on and then amber when the turn signal is used) - well they just work when used as blinkers .. but still look great. I also used the phillips white LED replacements for the side indicator bulbs as well as some custom blue LEDs for the inner most bulbs .. it looks good. Ill post pics on a separate post later.

But yeah .. the battery .. man these cars are sensitive

 

[Popbigguy]

Thanks everyone for your advice -- UPDATE :: it was in fact the battery .. took it to autozone to get it diagnosed and it was dead dead dead.

Get yourself a battery tender!!! And use it. These cars cannot sit for 3-4 weeks (isn't that what you posted?) without recharging the battery. And if you start it and only run it for 30-40 seconds only, AND run the top up / down with engine running,,,, you more than likely ran that battery down to death!