BAC Forum
General Boards => Technical Support => Topic started by: Richard And Babs Ames on November 12, 2013, 11:00:51 PM
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Situation: turn signal bulb, regular bulb works fine. lED works as caution flasher but not as a turn signal only two diodes light up and it does not blink.
Suggestions on what to check.
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Hi Richard, I don't have the solution but Jim Nichols will you may want to contact him.
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Thx
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I was told that you have to change your flasher unit to one that is designed for LED's
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I was told that you have to change your flasher unit to one that is designed for LED's
Or you have to buy a bit more expensive bulb that contains the proper circuitry. I've been using LED rear turn signal bulbs for two years without problems.
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Richard
The old style flasher units turn on and off by heating up inside due to current flow thru the flasher unit. Opens and closes the circuit. The LED flows so little current that the flasher doesn't heat up properly. Also why when you attached a trailer to a car they used to flash really fast until you installed a heavy duty flasher.
The 2 solutions already mentioned or you can add a load resistor (guessing 6 ohms 50 watt resistor) to the circuit.
Steve
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I believe Steve is right that the current draw for an LED bulb is just not sufficient to cause the flasher circuit to operate based on the load it was designed for using a filament bulb. The best solution is a flasher made for LEDs given that will work with most any LED bulb that you buy in the future. I am not much of a fan of load resistors as a solution given they consume current and in this case will have to dissipate about 30 watts of heat just to make the flasher work. My comment here is to aim at that being a last resort solution if you had to pick one....
Later Ed