A cautionary tale about upgrading to LED bulbs. I've been a fan of LED upgrades for a few years. I've had moderate success with my snowmobiles, (they typically only last a year or two) and great success with my Ford Edge (going on over 4 years). I've got a set of Aukee LEDs on the shelf waiting to go into my FJR soon. My caution is regarding the possibility of electronics failure in the LED. When a halogen bulb fails the filament burns through and the circuit is simply "open" at that point. You notice the bulb burnt out and eventually replace it. My experience this winter in one sled was very different. One of 2 LED bulbs in the sled failed, which popped a fuse. I replaced the fuse before removing the bulb, to confirm the bulb was burnt. The fuse held, the one bulb would not light, but the other bulb still worked on low beam, good so far. I could smell that terrible burnt plastic/electrical smell from the cowling near the non-functioning bulb. Then I pressed my high beam switch to check both bulbs, and had both bulbs now go dead, and my gauge package (speedo, tach, temp, info cntr) suddenly shut off and went dead too. Pressing the low beam switch re-activated the gauges and the low beam on the good bulb. I disconnected the bad bulb and discovered the good bulb worked on both high and low beam, and my gauges no longer malfunctioned. I could see a small melted spot at the rear of the bad LED base indicating the electronics had shorted and overheated. This apparently caused some sort of back-feed of voltage thru my sled, initiated thru the high/low beam switch, that affected the high beam on the good bulb and my gauges? Extremely weird and disturbing that a blown headlight could negatively affect other circuitry in this manner! So, I'm not saying don't upgrade to LEDs, but if you do, and you experience any weird electrical gremlins down the road, maybe check your bulbs firsts, and try disconnecting a burnt one before assuming you have other issues to see if the gremlins clear up. And for those looking at LEDs, some of the new crop have removed the fans, or moved the fans forward of the flange into the headlight housing so the rear part is exactly the same length as a regular halogen bulb. I'll update once I change my FJR to these LEDs. And if these "short-base" bulbs work in my FJR there will be a single installed in my little Ducati Hypermotard shortly as well.
