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LED tail light load resistor

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jason the terminator
  • Start date Start date
J

Jason the terminator

Guest
I installed a LED tail light and P3 lights on my 1100 because people just don't see me braking ( lots off squealing and smoking tires in the rear views). People really need to remove their head from their a$$ before getting behind the wheel. Installing these caused annoying flickering of tail and stop lamp out warnings. I installed the recommended 50watt load resistor and it gets very hot. This is normal according to everything I have read and should mount them someplace where they can sink the heat that is not near plastic or paint. This is where I am running into a problem and wonder where everyone else has mounted them or what they have done?
 
It will get hot since it is handling a fair amount of current. What is the ohm value of the resistor?
 
50 watt resistor for LED's- what's a P3 light? Getting hot likely means too much current. I agree that a brake light needs more dazzle to alert the ADD - just for comparison, here's what I did with a third brake light gizmo- draws .2 amp.
 
tom203 said:
what's a P3 light?
Click to expand...
P3 is one of several high-intensity lights designed for emergency vehicles that is small enough to mount on a motorcycle. Rather popular in the long-distance crowd of Goldwings and ST1300s.

Seeing is better than telling, click HERE to see a video.

.
 
I tried using a LED Tail Lamp as well, and had the "Tail Light Fail" indicator issue.
The tail light also had a odd red hue to it, cause the LEDs were Cool White.
The Warm White version was better color, but both were still under Lumins when compared to the original Incandescent.
I decided to just replace the rear incandescent lamp every year, keep it bright, 1157s are cheap.
A normal 1157 will use 2.1 amps (about 30 watts).
So a load resistor needs to be 6 ohms and at least 30 watts.
I've gotten away with 10 ohms.
Currently I use 2x 10 ohm resistors to run power from the rear running light, in series, to each rear yellow signal lights.
The yellows glow dimly, but are visible at night.
Now there is a parallax visual from behind, you can tell how far away you are from me.
I find a single red lamp is not enough to judge distance in the dark.

I like tom203's auxiliary LED strip Lamp. Bright and the right color.
Also like the Rear Disc Lock.
 
Last edited:
Looks like you got a good red LED.:clap: Quite a bit of selection there.:idea:
If your LED bulb is 5 watts, then you could get away with a smaller load resistor, say 10 ohms 30 watts. Maybe even 15 ohms.
You just need to load the circuit enough to keep the "Tail Bulb Fail" lamp from coming ON.
To dump the Resistor heat, you could mount it to the back of the license plate (large heat sink).
 
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