Flasher replacement

[boingk]

elevatorman71 - while that setup seems fine, doesn't it strike you as quite redundant? I thought one of the main advantages of LED's was lower current draw.

The best and easiest way to mod your bike to run LEDs would be an electronic flasher unit, wouldn't it?

- boingk

[elevatorman71]

i did use an led flasher on my bike and yes it does seem redundant but it was the only way it worked i took the old flasher out put in the new one designed for led's and didnt work so thats hot i came to try that and it worked dont understand why but it did

[Steve]

They work fine, just dont flash.
...
Any thoughts?

Thoughts? Yeah. If they don't flash, they don't "work fine".

Just so everyone knows in no uncertain terms, the three-prong flasher units in use on our bikes are not in any way compatible with any other three-prong flashers in use, anywhere.

In most of the "standard" three-prong flashers, the third prong is a ground terminal. And, there is no standard for which one of the terminals is the ground, as there are at least two versions. One has the center terminal as ground, another has one of the end terminals as ground. NONE of our terminals is a ground. The third terminal on our flashers is a signal from the control unit that turns on the flasher circuit.

.

[Octain]

Thoughts? Yeah. If they don't flash, they don't "work fine".

Just so everyone knows in no uncertain terms, the three-prong flasher units in use on our bikes are not in any way compatible with any other three-prong flashers in use, anywhere.

In most of the "standard" three-prong flashers, the third prong is a ground terminal. And, there is no standard for which one of the terminals is the ground, as there are at least two versions. One has the center terminal as ground, another has one of the end terminals as ground. NONE of our terminals is a ground. The third terminal on our flashers is a signal from the control unit that turns on the flasher circuit.

.

Um come one man, tell me something I didnt already know.

[jknappsax]

I'm pretty sure that my 1978 GS 750 and my 1979 GS 1000 both use a two-terminal flasher, as the turn signals aren't self-cancelling. Did they change from 2-wire to 3-wire after 1980? And I agree with boingk that using a shunt resistor across the LED doesn't make sense if you're trying to reduce current draw,since with the shunts, you are pulling roughly the SAME amount of current. With the relatively wimpy output in our bikes, the LED conversion frees up juice for aftermarket electronics, like radar detector, GPS, a comm system, etc.

[trintek]

another good two terminal flasher is the fl32 from autozone. will handle anything from led's to halogens as a flasher (we tested it with only the indicators in the cluster hooked up and it worked fine). currently using it on the 850 for turns and for hazards (2 units) and on the 450. about 8 bucks and 3 minutes to install.