Topic: led lights on your turn signals

[fergie]

does anyone know what is involed in putting led bulbs in your turn signals. I read somewhere that you have to add some electrical component or something.I just can't remember what it is. thanks for your help.fergie

[AndreRA3]

Fergie,

I am currently runnig leds on my front blinkers, and although I could not find any bulbs that would fit inside the blinker assemble, I found a ready made assembly at the local CycleGear store.  All I did was remove the old blinkers, and install the new ones.  Black wires go to ground, red wires go to the respective terminals.  All wires hooked up nicely (exactly where the previous wires went), and no watchamacallit before the blinkers.  I belive that the regulator (or whatever) that they put before the led bilinkers on some bikes and cars are to "tell" the car the blinkers are working even though the juice draw is so small.  I have not had this problem. I do have a new style blinker relay, if that makes any difference (and if it does, it will cost you 7 bucks at autozone and hook right in)

[Alan F.]

yup, it'll be that 'NEW' style relay. I've heard of them being called electronic flasher relays and stuff like that. the LED's just have too low of a current draw for the old style flasher relays to even sense them in the circuit (like a blown bulb)

where can you get the new style for $7 is that $7 US?

[AndreRA3]

Alan, I've seen them (& bought them) at Pepboys for 7 bucks.  It says electronic relay, and the one I bought is a 2 prong one like the Cb750 stock relay.  You can also get them in 3 prong for the same price.  I have also seen them at Autozone, and would bet O'Reilly has them too.

Just ask for flasher/blinker relay and they'll point you to the obscure corner of the store...  If you don't see them at first look under the 3 dollar old style relay  .

take care,

André

[Zeke]

Yeah, the LEDs don't draw enough current to make the relay blink, so if you're pimping out your own light assemblies there's something you need to fake out the blinker.

As others mentioned the usual LED lamps built to replace an incandescent bulb won't fit in the traditional turn signal housing.  I'm fond of my vintage honda signals so for now I'll just change the bulbs as necessary.

Last year, for safety reasons I bought an LED taillight to replace my regular bulb.  The blinking kind.  When the brakelight was on they blinked constantly.  Two things:

They weren't bright at all compared with the regular bulb.  It was cheap on EBAY $15.   Constant blinking is supposedly illegal in my state.

I decided to buy a DOT approved brake flasher instead, and use with regular bulb.  It flashes about 5 times and then goes solid.  I also have a headlight modulator that pulses my headlight during daylight hours -- this definately has reduced the # of yoyos merging in on me.

Zeke

[Sam Green Racing]

Has anyone heard of these posters ? .........5

Sam.

[Sam Green Racing]

Well!!!!!!!.....4

Sam

[Bodi]

You will need a new flasher, or add load resistors to draw enough power to get the original flasher to work. A 2-terminal electronic one should work with 2 regular bulbs and 2 LED bulbs - like leave the fronts as is and put in LED rears - but will not work with all LED signals. A 3-terminal one will flash any LED setup, but most will flash really fast with just LED lamps, this is a safety feature and is supposed to tell you a signal bulb is burned out... low lamp current (like with LEDs) means a lamp is dead with normal lamps.
Right angle LED bulbs are available, but I haven't seen any good ones. The only acceptable brightness LED lamps I've found (I have a box of them, all dim, that cost a pile) have Luxeon 3 or 5 watt LEDs, and are frigging bright. I have one with about 15 "high intensity" LEDs that's useless, the "bulb" with one Luxeon is amazing.
If you're trying to save power a load resistor for the signals doesn't hurt much at all, unless you leave the signals on all the time.

[Priscbs]

If you're doing it to save power, and are going all LED, then you will definitely need the electronic flasher.  However, if not, the sell these things that will replace the load previously produced by the standard bulb and allow the standard flasher to work.  I went rounds with this issue on a different bike doing a complete LED conversion.  I did the gauge lights and everything except to indicator bulbs that required the load to function properly.  One was a reserve fuel light, and the other was headlamp indicator that worked with a reserve lighting device.

Bodi beat me to it.  For replacements, I recommend superbrightleds.com