LED backup light

[Mr.gristle]

So an incandescent bulb works just fine in the lamp socket but when I swap in the identical 1156 matched depth retaining pin LED bulb it will not illuminate. Do I need to reverse the polarity at the socket to make this work or am I overthinking a much simpler solution?

[dlb]

No, an LED backup bulb should work just fine. I recently swapped in a super bright one, no issues at all with it. Do you have a few other known good LED bulbs you can test it with?

[Mr.gristle]

I had to buy 2 and tried both. The solution was indeed to make a short pigtail (insulated female space connectors fit inside the factory plug but had to use uninsulated male spades on the other side) and swap the ground and power legs. A multimeter applied positive side to the filament supply and negative to the bulb housing showed negative voltage. LEDs only flow power one direction. Idk why your vehicle did not require this work~around, but my 86 wagon did

[dlb]

Hmm. My guess would be that my LED bulbs are perhaps wired opposite to yours? I'm assuming all LED bulbs come from places with little to no quality control so maybe it might be a tossup as to whether a bulb will work out of the box.

FYI, these are the ones I bought: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07GTL2Z2J?psc ... ct_details

[Mr.gristle]

Ya I just got sylvania off the rack at oreillys. Not sure how bright it is yet as it is just now getting dark enough to test, but I'd be happy as a clam if it was 40% brighter than the old *factory koito with 332k miles*