Today I was playing around with my Firepower, moving a few LEDs around and cleaning a bit. So, with the play field up I thought I'd test this resistor I've spoken about. When I installed the LED flasher I just snipped one of the legs on the bleed resistor and moved the wires apart. My plan was if I didn't like the LED I'd just resolder the resistor back in. Anyway, this makes it pretty easy to put the resistor back in the circuit - this I did with a jumper lead and the LED glowed very brightly and noticeably.
I put a meter in series to try and measure the current flow - a bit hard to do with a digital meter as it jumps around a lot, but it looks like it was about 100mA - more than enough to make the LED glow, probably enough to shorten it's life and also pretty close for comfort to the 2W rating of the original resistor. On this basis I'd say it's best to take it out.
