L.E.D. Brake & Turn signal lights

[Anonymous]

I thought I would add these L.E.D. to increase the light and to reduce power and heat from the bulb, but when i added them to the rear turn siginals and the rear brake light, the turn signials would not blink, they woul djust stay on when the signal was turned on.
If these LED's work on cars when replacing the bulb, why does it not seem to want to work on My Bike?

thanks
Lennie

[Anonymous]

The LED lights do not put enough load on the system to make the flasher work. You need to change to a different type of flasher. Unfortunately, I can't remember what it's called at the moment.

[earlfor]

Re: L.E.D. Brake & Turn signal lights

Good quality LED's are brighter than bulb type lights. However, they have a more narrow viewing angle than bulbs and consequently are best used as additional brake lights or tail lights. I do not feel they are a good choice for turn signals where it is more advantagepus for as many viewers as possible from as many directions as possible to be aware of your intention to turn. LED's also lack the power consumption to activate the standard turn signal flasher......another negative. Best choice is to stick with the bulbs for turn signals. Although LED's consume aprox 10% of the power, there is no electrical savings because turn signals are only used intermittantly. Also, due to the configuration of the charging system, saving power is a bad thing if you are not additing something to consume power that will maintain the electrical balance of the system.

Earl

I thought I would add these L.E.D. to increase the light and to reduce power and heat from the bulb, but when i added them to the rear turn siginals and the rear brake light, the turn signials would not blink, they woul djust stay on when the signal was turned on.
If these LED's work on cars when replacing the bulb, why does it not seem to want to work on My Bike?

thanks
Lennie

[Planecrazy]

Earl makes a very good point regarding the balance of electrical load. If you add additional lights (never a bad thing) to maintain a balance, then having the LED's could be advantageous in terms of catching the attention of other drivers more effectively than bulbs do. Unlike the charging system of a car, our bikes don't vary the amount of power produced to match the load requirement of the accessories. That means that if you don't keep the system balanced then too much power will be converted to heat by the charging system and one or more parts will fail...

I believe there are plug in replacements for the conventional flasher units that require larger loads than LED's produce. These replacements use electronics to give you the desired flash rate, regardless of how much load exists. They tend to be much more expensive than there conventional counterparts.

Good Luck,
Steve 8)

[AOD]

i got a LED brake light to test out...and Earl is right the viewing angle is basically only if you're looking right at it. Our taillights lense works best when light hits it at all angles...with the LED in place it basically lit a spot on the lense...which wasn't going to work enough for me to use it.

[Anonymous]

LED lights

The flasher you are looking for is called a variable load flasher. There are a few companies that sell LED lamps that have the LEDs on various angles to mimick the output of a regular bulb. Try Signal Dynamics. They have some LED products and they might have the flashers you need. www.signaldynamics.com

[Anonymous]

I wonder if you could just put a resister in line with the blinker to increase the load enough to trigger the relay? Not sure how many ohms but if I vaguely remember my highschool electronics class the formula was

Voltage
--------------
Amps * Ohms


so if the voltage is 13 volts and the amps are .042 (using a generic guess that the wattage for the blinkers is .5 watts, watts = voltage*amps) then perhaps a 300 ohm resister would be enough to trigger the relays again.

Just a guess but resisters are dirt cheap and it wouldn't hurt (I hope) to try it. Maybe somebody can check my math that's used it a little more recently

[Anonymous]

A standard blinker bulb is 21 Watts (at least in Europe).
That would mean it draws almost 2 Amps of current.
If you replace it by a resistor, you would need a 6 Ohm/25 Watts resistor. And these are huge!

[Anonymous]

Good quality LED's are brighter than bulb type lights. However, they have a more narrow viewing angle than bulbs and consequently are best used as additional brake lights or tail lights. I do not feel they are a good choice for turn signals where it is more advantagepus for as many viewers as possible from as many directions as possible to be aware of your intention to turn.

Take a look at these LED lights:

http://www.wixtools.com/html/motorcycle_.html

They are designed to work with standard reflector buckets and should be a big improvement. They do not have replacements for the flasher bulb, though.

Mark

[AOD]

my style LED light was simliar to the above, but did not light the whole lamp up.

i saw a guy in our GS ralley that had a LED light...he had a big red dot i the middle of his lamp, that's it.

~AOD

[Anonymous]

I wonder if you could just put a resister in line with the blinker to increase the load enough to trigger the relay? Not sure how many ohms but if I vaguely remember my highschool electronics class the formula was

Voltage
--------------
Amps * Ohms


so if the voltage is 13 volts and the amps are .042 (using a generic guess that the wattage for the blinkers is .5 watts, watts = voltage*amps) then perhaps a 300 ohm resister would be enough to trigger the relays again.

Just a guess but resisters are dirt cheap and it wouldn't hurt (I hope) to try it. Maybe somebody can check my math that's used it a little more recently

Actually Mookie, the current draw is what needs to be increased - adding a resistor could only decrease it. Most led's already have an inline resistor to limit the current.

Yes the formula is v=i*r, and w = v*i, but remember that v is fairly constant. Increasing r will just decrease i - not what you want.

[lhanscom]

What happens if you put a capacitor in instead?

[Anonymous]

What happens if you put a capacitor in instead?

I'm assuming you mean instead of a resistor. If the capacitor is in series with the led, the led will not light up as the capacitor will block dc current. If it is in parallel, then it will do nothing but store a small charge. In short, nothing to help with the blinker problem either way.

Someone posted a link to a set of led's that has 19 to 25 led's in each bulb. This not only gives more light, it may draw enough current also. I'm not sure as I didn't see any information on specs.

What you may want to try out is to add a resistor in parallel with the led. When the circuit is activated, the resistor will draw a majority of the current and the blinker should work. The value of the resistor is what would have to be determined. If you could measure the current through the nomal bulb when blinking the resistor could be easilly calculated. A good guess to start with would be a 1k ohm resistor, If the led then blinks, you're ok, if not, put in a smaller value.

After writing this, I wonder if Mookie was thinking just that? If so - sorry Mookie!

[Anonymous]

I think it would just be easier to change the flasher. A variable load flasher would probably do the trick.

Most flashers use a bi-metallic or thermal flasher. When the circuit is activated, the circuit is closed and the light is on. Then the current draw causes one side of the metal in the flasher to expand, opening the circuit, and the light is off. The metal cools and contracts, closing the circuit again, and the light is on. This continues at a rapid rate, making the lamps flash, until the turn signal is switched off.

I believe the problem with the LED's is the fact that they do not draw enough current to make the flasher work properly. A variable load flasher flashes at a set rate, no matter the load or number of lamps. I had a similar problem with my truck when I put LED lamps in my turm signals. Had to change the flasher, and they worked great.

[Anonymous]

Actually you would need a resister in parallel not in series to draw more current. A few of my electrical engineering friends have done it. I just decided to spend 30 dollars and get a stedy state flasher insted...no sence monkeying with it and i dont have to worry about buying the "wrong" blinkers