I have a 1995 Silver SC300 with original black interior, original 5 speed, and a sunroof. It came with the original 95 tails but they were cracked. I really prefer the way the early model tails look so when I replaced the cracked tails I put 92-94 tails on it. The taillight out indicator on the dash now comes on when I turn on the headlights and thats all. No hyper blink at all. I checked every light on the car they all function properly. I read alot of threads and found a few relevant posts.

From my reading I have come up with the following:

I think it might be possible the wrong type of bulb (one drawing more or less amps) is installed somewhere but doubt it.

More likely the fact that my old tail lights had running lights that used 3.15 amps per cluster and my new ones use 2.1 per cluster and this is causing the system to think a bulb is out which makes the light come on.

here is a chart I made to compare the amp draw
(assuming the correct bulbs are installed in both)

95 cluster has:
Bulb --------application
1156x1 BACKING = 2.1
168x3 RUNNING LIGHTS = 3.15 or 1.05 each
1156x2 STOP LIGHT = 4.2
1156x1 SIGNAL = 2.1

event---------amps
lights on = 3.15
brakeing = 7.35
signal = 5.25
brake + signal = 9.45
backing = 5.25

92 cluster has:
Bulb --------application
1156x1 BACKING 2.1
1157x1 RUNNING/STOP 2.1/.59
1156x1 STOP 2.1
1156x3 SIGNAL 6.3

event--------amps
lights on = 2.1
brakeing = 4.79
signal = 8.4
brakeing + signal = 11.09
backing = 4.2

My first question is do we know what exactly triggers this light? Is it ONLY the difference in running light amps? Or does it use another event? Maybe all events?

My next question is would it be possible to fix this by upgrading to LEDs somehow?

 

Just get some 95/96 tails and call it a day or upgrade to 97 and up ones.

 

I dont like the way 95/96 or 97+ tails look. I want to use 92-94 tails. Also simply removing the bulb on the dash so I do not see the indicator is also not an option for me. I want this to work. There has to be a way. It cant be that complicated.

 

Well when you go from 92-94s to 95/6s or 97+s, your problem lies because your resistance has decreased. But since your doing the inverse the problem is your resistance is too high. You are going to have to wire stuff in parallel or use lower resistors. (resistor, new bulbs or leds) But odds are you will need to do a combination of the 2. Have fun with problem, its to much work imo.

 

http://superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/s...uct=CAR#RL-650

you'll need some of the gold resistors about 3/4 of the way down the page. don't quote me on this but just from looking at your situation real quick, it looks like you'll need one 6 ohm wired in with your running lights and one 6 ohm wired in with your stop lights on each side. total of 4

 

I was looking at the resistors and think that might be my fix. Im going to do some testing tomorrow to see if they would indeed fix it. Im curious about how to wire them in tho. I understand how you would use them with LEDs. Would it be the same way as with LEDs (across). Or would it be inline?

 

same as with LED's. i have ebay tails in my '93 for now and i'm using resistors to fix my hyperblink. they work great. i have them mounted with double sided tape in the gap below the tail light btwn the bumper and trunk.

 

across, inline? What? Use proper words so we can understand you.

Anyways you would need to take the resistors and wire them parallel with the light bulbs that way the overall resistance drops. If you wired them in series you would just increase the resistance which is the opposite of what you want.

 

across would be parallel, inline would be series. you need across/parallel

 

I think the issue causing the failure indicator bulb to light up is that the 92-94 utilizes a flasher unit while the 95-96 and 97-00 relies on different taillight ECUs.