Vehicle: 2011 XL 5.0 4wd 32k miles- solid low mileage platform that I figured I could put some money into and make it a little more to my liking.

Purchased in June w/23k miles and as per usual, LED's are typically a must. Installed Underground Lighting (UL) LED's with built-in resistor/fan front/rear and instantly received hyperflash. Used Forscan to disable bulb outage, fronts good, but rears came back with a B132B-11/12 Stop/Turn Lamp: Circuit Short to Ground. Install incandescent bulbs, works normal, reset codes.
Contacted UL and Danny sent replacements. Received same result. Re-install incandescent, works normal, reset codes. He's certain that there's a problem with the vehicle.

Purchased/installed Morimoto's, received same result. Purchased plug-n-play load resistors, and got erratic results. Flip them 180deg and still out of whack. Re-install incandescent, works normal, reset codes. Speak w/Mori rep while acquiring RA and he assures me that full housings will work fine w/o issue. Unfortunately, price is too much of a deterrent.

Decide that sticking with OEM is the only option at this point and drive for a few months until Black Friday sales entice me enough to try full Morimoto housings, not just bulbs. They work as advertised and alleviate BCM concerns. The assemblies are extremely nice but didn't like the smoke color and definitely didn't care for the way they stuck out (bulged) over an inch past the body. Probably fine on a Raptor, but not to my liking on regular body lines. Plus, the price of entry was a bit much as well, even after the 20% discount.

After further forum research, decide to check/clean/replace all grounds, apply electric grease (NOT dielectric) on all contact points and attempt to give the UL's another go. Thought I had found the smoking gun, bad grounds, as everything was working great. Unfortunately, this was short lived and went back to failing after starting the engine. That's the really weird part; worked fine engine off and failed with engine running...?

Purchase a pricier set of plug-n-play load resistors, gave them a-go with the UL's yesterday, and they were even further out of whack with one bulb illuminating one LED on each panel and others illuminating three (parking vs braking). Flip 180deg and some went out completely.

That's the 4-5 month snapshot and at this point, I've pretty much given-in to the fact that I'm stuck running incandescent bulbs in the rear.

The engine on/off findings really got me confused/baffled and welcome educated inputs on this scenario.

 

Idk what I'm reading?

 

My apologies.
It's a 5-month snapshot of what I had done to get rear LED bulbs to function w/o hyperflashing while only conveying what worked and what didn't work.
Was hoping a tech or someone knowledgeable would be able to chime-in and provide educated guidance and thus, eliminating the typical 'do this/do that' with Forscan, better bulbs, load resistors etc... when all had already been attempted in various configurations. No offense, but this seems to be a very common trend on forums.
The 'worked fine' with engine off, but failed with engine on was the real kicker in all of this nonsense.

 

seems like just another LED question

 

Sold my 2011 XLT. But not before restoring taillights to OEM incandescent. Thought I could use these Diode Dynamics bulbs, and the resistors on a cargo trailer. But they won’t fit. Resistors are 100 watt, 6 ohm, oversized for the load, never get warm. Got resistors from EBay.
These DD LEDs are redder and brighter than OEM. No hyper flash with resistors either. Might try them.




2024 402a 3.5l