2011 F-150XLT eco

I considered calling this write-up “LED’s for dummies” as I knew nothing about LED’s and very little about electricity/wiring/etc. going into this project. Selecting the correct bulb(s) can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re looking for/at. Try searching ebay for a T10 LED and you’ll see what I mean. I decided to do this write-up to share my experience in hopes that maybe someone else in a similar situation can get some answers to some of the basic questions that come up when considering an LED swap. Most of the install was pretty straightforward but I ran into some conflicting information about the resistors and hyperflash. Hopefully my experience will help someone out…

My girlfriend’s company brings in LED’s from China and sells them on ebay, amazon, etc. If you purchase(d) LED’s for your car there is a chance you could have ordered from her company. I just bought my truck and I wanted to update my headlights as I was used to the HID’s on my last car. The stock headlights on my F-150 weren’t doing it for me. She suggested that I try LED headlights. I had ZERO knowledge about LED headlights nor had I seen them in action but I figured what the hell? Her boss basically let her take home a box of lights for me to try out. She said I could bring back whatever I didn’t use and she would only charge me for the lights that ended up in my truck. (Huge hookup here – this project would have been a lot more painful without that relationship). I hadn’t planned on doing a full LED swap but since I had this box of goodies I figured it would be silly not to at least try them out…

PLUG & PLAY:
Most of the lights that I installed were as easy as removing the stock bulb and plugging in its LED replacement. Interior, license plate (hint- flathead screwdriver will pop these out from the bumper), 3rd brake light, over the cab lights, fogs, even front turn signals were pretty straightforward. One thing to note- in some cases, I went through 3 or 4 different options before I found the light that looked good on my truck. The 3rd brake light was particularly challenging. I kept getting a washed out/pink look. I ended up going with a T10 5smd.

The other challenging bulb was the front parking light/turn signal. The first 2 lights that are called “amber” actually looked more like a peach color. Reluctantly I tried the “yellow” bulb that my girlfriend recommended and that was the winner. It is a true amber color and looks great on the truck. Not sure why they call it yellow? Lost in translation maybe?

HEADLIGHTS:
The H13 LED conversion kit is pretty easy to install. Basically you just remove the stock bulb from the housing, then there is a small ring that you install in the back of the housing by CAREFULLY inserting it and turning it ¼ turn. Next, you install the actual headlight bulb which looks kind of odd (it’s got a built in fan on the back side of it - pics below) by, again, CAREFULLY inserting it into the ring which you just installed and turning it ¼ turn.
I stress CAREFULLY because we broke 2 rings and the connector on 1 bulb just trying to install. (I didn’t have that hookup I would be pretty irritated at this point).

There is an in line ‘driver’ that you install between the bulb and the stock wiring harness. Easy install. Comes with double sided tape to mount it under your hood. It was not hard to find a spot to install this.

Once we got them installed, the passenger bulb would flicker when you first turned on the headlights. I had to swap out that bulb and wouldn’t you know it, 3rd time’s the charm.

They look great and the visibility is fantastic. I’ve been driving with them for a few weeks now and nobody has flashed me so I think I’m ok there. I am extremely impressed with the results and super happy with the quality. Better light quality than my HID projectors from my M5. Only comment here is be extremely careful with the mounting rings. It’s easy to do them right but they are fragile so it’s also easy to break them.

RESISTORS:
I’m not going to go into detail on how to install a resistor or what they do. There are plenty of videos out there to explain that. What I want to focus on is “where do I need a resistor” and “how many do I need”?

I watched a bunch of you tube videos and read a bunch of information on forum’s, etc. Some say you need one resistor for the entire left side of your car and one for the right side. Some say you need a resistor for every LED bulb that flashes. Some say you only need one for the front blinker. Well, I found none of these to be true, but here’s what I found for my 2011 F-150 XLT SCREW:

1) I did not need a resistor on the turn signals on the front of the truck. I’m still not sure why (maybe someone can help me understand that?). When I installed the LED turn signal up front I did not experience any hyperflash. Remember, I went through a few different bulbs searching for the right shade of amber and none of them required a resistor. Weird.

2) My rear tail lights have 2 park/tail/brake/signal bulbs on each side with a reverse light in the middle. When I installed the LED’s in the rear, I got the hyperflash. This is where I was stumped. Do I need only one resistor per side or two? There are 3 wires coming out of the wire harness…which ones do I tap into?

Here is what I figured out:
• You need one resistor for each rear tail/brake/signal bulb. That’s 2 per side, and 4 total for the truck.
• It was easy to spot the ground wire but which of the other 2 wires do I tap into? I found a wiring diagram from a 2013 and found that the wire colors were the same on my 2011. On the left side tail, the 3 wires are black (ground), yellow/green (constant), and gray/brown (signal). On the right side tail, the ground and constant were the same colors while the signal wire was pink/orange. TAP INTO THE SIGNAL LIGHT- DO NOT TAP INTO THE CONSTANT! I’m not sure what will happen if you do tap into the constant but I read that the resistor will get really hot and I assume it probably still won’t fix the hyperflash issue.

If your wires are not the same colors as mine, identify the ground wire which will probably be black, then look for a 2nd wire color that is the same on both sides. That should be your constant. If the 3rd wire is a different color on the left than on the right side, that should be your signal wire and that’s where the resistor taps into.

Last thing I wanted to add was a parts list of the bulbs I used on my truck.
• 1 x H13 LED Headlight Kit
• 2 x H10 80w B-Cool Fog Lights
• 2 x 3157-68 Yellow (front blinkers)
• 2 x T10-2323-1w (side marker lights)
• 4 x T15-5730-10w (reverse and bed lights)
• 1 x T10 5smd (3rd brake light)
• 4 x 3157-2323-15w (rear brake/signal lights)
• 4 x resistors
• 2 x T10 5w (license plate)
• 3 x 42mm-5630-9smd festoon (back seat interior lamps)
• 2 x T10 5smd white (map lights)

Had I known I was going to do this write-up I would have taken some before and after pictures. If there’s anything you want to see I’m happy to take some more photos.

Thanks and good luck with your LED’s.