My LED's keep burning out., Why? Options

[richee3]

I have been using LED's in my gauge cluster for a little over 2 years now. The first set of LED's I had were cheap-o blue LED's from Ebay. After a while, the LED behind my fuel and engine temp gauge went out. But it didn't go all the way out. It started flashing on and off, between all the way off, all the way on, and about halfway in between. After a while, it settled down to being about halfway on, but it would still flash. I chalked that up to cheap LED's, and moved on to white LED's from v-leds.com. I got them put in last Christmas. Last Spring, same thing happens, in the same spot. The bulb behind the fuel/temp gauge starts flashing like it's burning out, but never goes all the way out. I moved it around, and no matter where I put it, it still flashed. So I replaced the bulb with a spare that I had, and a few weeks ago, it started doing the same thing. Now, the other LED's behind my speedo and tach, in my turn signal indicators, and in my key ring are all fine. Nothing ever happens to them. It's always the one behind the fuel/temp gauge, and it's always the bulb going out. I can move it anywhere and it still flashes. I find it hard to believe that it's just coincidence that 3 different LED's have gone bad, when they were all in the same spot. So... What's up with my LED's? Or, I guess, what's up with my gauge cluster that is making them burn out like that? I have a video of what they are doing, if anybody needs to see it.

Thanks in advance for any insight you guys have.

[solidxsnake]

LEDs take fine to voltage changes, provided it's within their range. Are you overvolting them? Some LEDs have an operating range of 1.7-2.5v (generally Red) and some take up to 3-4v (generally Blue). If you run them too low, they won't light up, too much and they'll glow brighter than normal. Too high and you'll blow them.

I am currently putting together LED clusters for my dash. I bought 50 white LEDs ($.09 a piece) and am putting 4 LEDs to a cluster. I'm running them in series, 4 per cluster. That gives each LED 3 volts to work with, which is well within their safe operating range. I was planning on doing 5, running one of them in parallel. Worked for a bit, then I glued them together and put the volts back up to 12v, and the glue ended up breaking the series circuit, leading to all 12v flowing through the parallel'd LED and popping it in my face. Smelled awful, but looked cool