Morimoto XB tail lights drain the battery

[evgenyvasenev]

Asking for some help here. I found out that my Morimoto tail lights are draining the battery. It’s a really weird issue and took me almost a year to troubleshoot since I have a lot of third-party accessories.

The lights seem to drain the battery from 12.7V to around 12.1V over 2 days without driving. The strange part is, if the hood is open, the drain doesn’t happen. It’s not a constant draw, so standard parasitic draw tests don’t catch anything. The car goes into sleep mode just fine — no draw shows up, everything looks normal — but it seems like the tail lights are waking up some modules periodically during sleep.

When I disconnect both tail lights, the problem stops and everything is fine.

Unfortunately, Morimoto support hasn’t been very helpful — they keep pointing me to generic parasitic draw testing videos and say that a replacement won’t fix it.

Any advice? I’m not here to complain — I actually love the lights — but I’ve already lost one battery, and this issue is really inconvenient.

That's my Bronco on the ad

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[4x4TruckLEDs.com]

How do you know it's the tail lights? I find it hard to believe it's the tail lights because they are plug and play. They can't REQUEST more power from the truck no different then the regular tail lights. They plug into the existing circuit. So if the truck's operating properly they just don't get power.

Not unless you made changes in Forscan to change how they are powered? Or you ran a dedicated power source to them. Otherwise... I can't see how they could cause a drain at all since the truck simply doesn't send any power to the lights when it's off.

So if these tails are causing a problem, the oem tails would also cause a problem.

You said you have a lot of 3rd party accessories... what kind of accessories.

 

[redone17]

Ever figure this out? I’m over the Oracle look and my 2021 was totaled. So, I’m on the hunt for a set of these at a good price.

 

[evgenyvasenev]

Yeah, I changed the lights and everything is good.

 

[redone17]

Yeah, I changed the lights and everything is good.

Bad batch? Loose connection?

Just landed a pair for $482 shipped.

 

[evgenyvasenev]

I don't know, they said me the lights should not be a problem as @4x4TruckLEDs.com but it's gone after a replacement or at least became less as a problem (tested a couple of times after 2-4 days of not driving).

 

[redone17]

Did you replace Halogens or LED?

I’m getting a hyper-flash turn signal for a couple seconds before it returns to normal tempo. I had several years of replacing the resistors on my Oracles. Wondering if I should have just ran the Forscan changes and avoided the resistors altogether.

I’m wondering if they perform differently either way.

 

[evgenyvasenev]

Did you replace Halogens or LED?

I’m getting a hyper-flash turn signal for a couple seconds before it returns to normal tempo. I had several years of replacing the resistors on my Oracles. Wondering if I should have just ran the Forscan changes and avoided the resistors altogether.

I’m wondering if they perform differently either way.

LED

 

[Bird Dog Off Road]

Bad batch? Loose connection?

Just landed a pair for $482 shipped.

new? Where from?

 

[Glade Runner]

I hope this was a random issue since I just installed my smoked versions Saturday.

 

[redone17]

new? Where from?

Oh crap. Looks like I scored a set before they realized they never adjusted their site with the recent price increases. They were listed at $495 and now they’re $578. But with the BLACK discount code they’re currently $532.34 shipped at Panda Motorworks.

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