Chevy Colorado & GMC Canyon banner

LED trailer light

681 views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  Tetz  
#1 ·
I have looked over Youtube for an answer to this question and couldn't find one.

If a person was to swap out trailer lights for LED do you need to run a resistor on the turn signal/brake wire to keep from hyper-flash?

I have a utility trailer and I was thinking of swapping it over.
 
#2 ·
I have swapped many trailer lights to LED with no issues. I currently have a boat trailer with LED submersible lights that do not contain any resistors and my truck does not hyperflash. Truck does not report any issues with lighting at all.

There is a thread that was posted yesterday regarding a 2025 camper trailer that is causing the truck to show an issue with left signal. That appears to be the one anomoly though.
 
#3 ·
Just wondering if there are any issues with the change.

My trailer is almost 10 years old. My brother in law beat it up pretty good with a Bobcat. I was thinking about freshening it up over the winter with new lights , fixing the dings in the fenders, and fresh paint or Line-X maybe.
 
#4 ·
Each time I get a trailer be it to haul or boat related, I dislike the broken or burnt out bulbs and replace with MaxxHaul LED lights off Amazon. Based on my order history, 5 sets and all good so far. In your case it sounds like you will be a happy guy with that trailer redone. Enjoy that project.
 
#6 ·
As a bit of trivia, in the past, the hyper flashing with LEDs is caused by the reduced load changing the rate that the bi-metallic strip in the flasher relay would snap back and forth. This would also happen if you had a turn signal light out. Incidentally, in the US, they made it mandatory to indicate that a bulb was out (I read that somewhere, I think it’s right). That’s why modern vehicles, with BCM (or lighting module in our case) controlled flashers will still hyperflash when they detect reduced load in the turn signal circuit.

As far as a trailer, since the circuit is electronically controlled, it doesn’t care about the load of a trailer turn signal circuit. So it won’t hyperflash. It depends on the fuse for too high of load and doesn’t check for too low of a load.
I remember something about older vehicles needing a heavy duty flasher relay for trailers.