Have an 03 LS with only 44k miles and had to to replace the rear wiring harness inside the trunk lenz housings. Noticed that the DRL bulb sockets were completely burned out and the plastic housing was melted and cracked. After further testing and inspection of the cause, our small 2825 bulbs get damn hot. Wanting to cure this problem, I tried numerous LED bulbs but each caused a dashboard "Tail light warning" error. The reason for this is that our OEM bulbs draw 5 watts and the LED bulbs draw .5 watts. The ECU needs to read 5 watts from each bulb to think there is a bulb in good working order. Even after buying LED bulbs advertised as 5 watts, the dashboard warning came on. Clearly they were not 5 watts. Question, has anyone found LED bulbs for this location that does not cause the dashboard warning?

If a LED bulb doesn't trigger the warning light it will draw 5 watts and you'll be back to square one. Either remove the warning light bulb from the cluster or use external resistors.

Which bulb is the 2825? I haven't messed with any of the tail light bulbs, but I've swapped my license plate, reverse, and front city light to led and I've had no issues, just buy canbus LEDs. I used auxito.

There are 6 2825 bulbs in the rear. 2 are the licence plate bulbs, which can be changed to most any LED watt bulb and not trigger the dashboard warning. There is 1 in each of the 4 tail light clusters. These are small bulbs that burn very hot. I bet everyone who is reading this thread has burned out wiring sockets. Be very careful when you want to remove it and replace this bulb as the plastic is brittle due to the excessive heat and will break.

@LeX2K every LED bulb I have tried in the tail light clusters trigger the dashboard warning. I am looking for anyone who has used LEDs in this location without them triggering the dashboard warning.

I have tried sets of all these LEDs. The far right one was advertised as 5 watts - ha!

"5 Watts" can mean many things.
It can mean that the bulb draws 5 Watts of power from it's power supply.
It can mean that the bulb emits the same amount of light as a 5 Watt incandescent bulb.
It can mean that the manufacturer/seller is lying because they want to offload a defective load of stock.

What you need are 2825 CANBUS Compatible/CANBUS Error Free LEDs.
These include resistor(s) in parallel with the LED that means that the bulb still draws 5W but 4.5W of that is via a resistor and only 0.5W is via the LED itself.

You also need to be aware of the colour temperature of the replacement LEDs.
Incandescent bulbs are 2700-3000K, halogens typically 3500-4500K and "daylight" bulbs are 6000-6500K.
If you use a bulb with a different colour temperature, it will look different.
I find the 6000K bulbs that everyone seems to be obsessed with don't work well for brake/tail/signal applications.
For interior lights they are fine if you enjoy that "brighter than daylight" effect, but not for me.

@BigBoomer Thanks for the detailed info. I have ordered some 2825 CANBUS 5watt LEDs from Amazon. The difference in these more expensive LEDs is that, as you point out, they have IC that draws 5watts, but only sends a fraction of it to the actual LEDs. The balance is dissipated via heat.

Well that was fun. After trying 3 different CANBUS compliant LED bulbs, all caused the dashboard Taillight warning error. It was only after installing a load resistor that any LED bulb will work and not cause the dashboard warning. All of with these wonderful LS430's have the burned/melted sockets. This is the only way I have found to solve this problem. Here are some installation pictures.

Originals are not CANBUS they are regular incandescent bulbs. Lamp out warning is load based. That's nice work looks clean.

I did try to tell you

@LeX2K thanks. I did know the original bulbs are incandescent and draw 5 watts and get 300 degrees hot! It was suggested to use a CANBUS compliant LED bulb. However none worked and all caused a dashboard ⚠️. Non of these bulbs draw 5 watts and this is the real problem. My final post was the only way I could get the cooler LED's to work. The small load resistors are from Amazon and get hot. So if anyone tries this, insulate them from any plastic parts. Hope this helps others.

Yea be very careful with those resistors, I've never used them but I hear they get really hot and can cause fires, you're basically just creating a short, that's why I never bothered with them.

That's why I suggested removing the bulb in the cluster. Since the load resistor is taking the place of the original bulbs it's not going to alert you of a bad bulb anyway.
It's not that bad, short=maximum draw possible.

Thanks guys. I will keep an eye on the heat issue of these resistors..Just replaced the drivers side rear door ML midrange speakers and found a great solution. Will start a new thread on this soon.