Originally Posted by
M60A3Driver
I had LED lights in my license plate sockets. One night after being at a car show I had no dash lights. It turned out that one of the chips fell out of the LED and caused a short. Knocking out the dash lights and license plate lights.
They were cheap garbage bulbs and closing the trunk was the cause of the failure. I only use the regular type Sylvania bulbs in there now.
I swapped out the LED bulbs for the license plate lights with conventional 6418 bulbs. I did a little comparison while I was doing this work. Turns out the LED bulbs were just slightly shorter than the conventional 6418 bulbs (naked eye probably wouldn't see the difference). I figure it was enough of a difference that the LED bulbs was slipping out of the plastic retainers in the light fixture with enough deck lid closures over time. That resulted in the LED bulb losing contact with the bulb holders & generating the failed exterior light warning light in the instrument panel.