flasher unit

Hi all, i have a 2006 GRiSO 850. I would like to switch the indicators to LED. Does anyone know where I can get a suitable non load bearing Flasher unit?

Blinkers are driven directly from the dash. You can get away with putting load resistors in the ground wires with a common ground. One resistor for front, one for rear.

beetle wrote:

Blinkers are driven directly from the dash. You can get away with putting load resistors in the ground wires with a common ground. One resistor for front, one for rear.

That should work for the series resistor.  However, the light current load of the LED blinkers means that the dash will think that one of the bulbs is blown and will throw up a display saying this.

I think the only option is to add parallel resistors for each blinker, as they are on separate circuits.  I found that a 15 ohm 5 watt resistor on each is sufficient.

Wrong.

What makes my blinkers work? Unicorns?

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uhuh, yup!

beetle wrote:

Wrong.

What makes my blinkers work? Unicorns?

Possibly the same unicorns that insisted mine needed the resistor. I would have much preferred not having to include them.

Perhaps your blinkers have parallel resistors built in? Otherwise, I dunno.

The problem with using parallel resistors is that should a LED fail, the dash won't recognise an open circuit. You then only find out when you get hit by a car, or Mr. Plod says "you're nicked, Sunshine" and gives you a failure to indicate infringement notice.

At least with a single series resistor, the dash will indicate a failure.

Now I'm curious. What size resistor (ohms and watts) do you use for two LEDs?

I used what I had lying about, 22Ω 50W. Overkill, but they get surprisingly warm. 10-15Ω, 10W would work.

So ohm's sez that you have about half an amp running through that 22Ω series resistor. Have you tried disconnecting one LED flasher to observe whether the dash registers a fault?

My thinking was that the LED is very reliable, so no electronic monitoring is necessary.

I always thought it was a no-no to connect LEDs in parallel without a limiting series resistor on each one. This explains it better than I ever could.

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Didn't you already extinguish an expensive LED flasher?

They're not connected in parallel. Even if inside the dash, the left & right sides only have one source driving both blinkers, there is a series limiting resistor in my setup. One per end, not one per side. The front left & right blinkers share a series resistor in the ground connection. Ditto for the rear.

I have tried disconnecting one to confirm the dash registers a fault. It does.

Yes, I extinguished an expensive LED blinker. I am ham fisted. I repaired it, however. The LED units themselves may last longer than me, but on a vibrating moving vehicle, wires and connectors can move and loosen. I had a troublesome left rear blinker when I had the original units on. I had to re-terminate the wire in the connector to fix it. Water ingress is also a possibility.