LED turn signal problems

[shadowskater]

Hey all, So and I am now in the process of rewiring the previous owners 'electrical tape job' of doing is own flush mount turn signals. He went the cheap route and instead of buying some quality flush mounts that fit in the original slots of the old signals, he purchased some off of ebay that would seem to fit any model. I am not worried about the perfect look of the fitting and I kinda like the look of the flush mounts that he put on there, even it they are china made.

I tried to find the same signals he purchased on ebay and came to something that looked very similar but not exactly the same as there is no engraving on the signals on my fairings. My signals:


Ebay semi-equivalent: LINK.

Since they are LED instead of lamps they have 2 power resistors in the setup, one per side of the the bike, one for the left circuit and one for the right.
This is a picture of the power resistors:

So they are 25 Watt, 6.8 Ohm resistors.

Here is a quick thrown together schematic of the setup when I received the bike.


I read this thread and came out with a lot of questions, I sent a PM to VeX, but I figured I would make this question abroad for more input.

I am thinking about replacing the setup of power resistors, as VeX recommended that for each side of the bike you should run 50watt power resistors. Run the 25's or switch to 50's?

Next I was wondering what you would recommend if I wanted to make the signals brighter, they are horribly dim right now and I would like to make the signals brighter. I was considering buying a bunch of brighter LED's from mouser or digikey and then replacing them on the boards of the blinkers, but depending on the price of the LED's that could become expensive, and would be most definitely tedious.

Or another option I was considering was to just buy an integrated brake light assembly and no worry about the back LED's and then use the 25W power resistors for only the front LED system. Only bad thing about that option is the legality of the integrated brake light.

Basically I really want to replace or improve the turn signal lighting on my 250r, and I am weighing the options and directions I could take, What would you do?

[randomwalk101]

search?

[HKr1]

25 watt or 50watt, thats just what the resistor can handle power wise. It's the resistance that really matters first.

And if you happen to do the math...... 7 ohms @ 12 volts works out to right around 20 watts(23 @ 14v). < So the 25 is fine.

I would use resistors as a last resort anyway

[00NissanNinja]

If you up the resistance the lights will get dimmer, try v-leds or superbrightleds they have great replacement leds that you can simply put in place of the majority of your stock lights. Most of them have built in resistors to keep the led from overheating and burning out. I took the replace directly with led's route for most of the lights in my car and they are all brighter than stock but the good leds are expensive don't get the cheap ones. Some lights I had to wire which was fine but is more work and if you screw up you have to fix it again, but thats not that bad on a mc at least

[shadowskater]

Thanks for the replies.

I have been doing a lot of reading, I was unaware there was so many threads detailing this project threw many visions. After looking around at what everyone has experienced I know what I would like to eventually end up with as my turn signal setup: Led blinkers up front, Bikemonkey Integrated Tail in rear, extra auxiliary led blinkers in various places.

The only bulb in the system will be the incandescent bulb in the dash, which I will equip with rectifying diodes as detailed in many threads to prevent the backflow that is default wired by Kawasaki.

I will be replacing the stock flasher relay, with a FL32 or something comparable and pulling out all the power resistors as they are not the best route, and seemingly just remedy symptoms and do not solve anything.

So then I will have a full 4 LED blinker system, my only question is the wiring.

Once I solder in the diodes and put in the new electronic flasher, is the wiring as simple as:

Front left/right LED signals wired to the stock wiring cable that routed to the stock front blinkers. (with resistors of course where needed)

Bikemonkey Integrated Tail: Left/Right wires to their respected green wires on the stock rear blinker cable

Rear blinker L/R cable's ground: left open circuit? or splice into tail light ground?

Extra LED blinkers if necessary: directly wired into rear stock blinker cables. (with resistors where necessary)

[jonthechron]

Originally Posted by shadowskater

Thanks for the replies.

I have been doing a lot of reading, I was unaware there was so many threads detailing this project threw many visions. After looking around at what everyone has experienced I know what I would like to eventually end up with as my turn signal setup: Led blinkers up front, Bikemonkey Integrated Tail in rear, extra auxiliary led blinkers in various places.

The only bulb in the system will be the incandescent bulb in the dash, which I will equip with rectifying diodes as detailed in many threads to prevent the backflow that is default wired by Kawasaki.

I will be replacing the stock flasher relay, with a FL32 or something comparable and pulling out all the power resistors as they are not the best route, and seemingly just remedy symptoms and do not solve anything.

So then I will have a full 4 LED blinker system, my only question is the wiring.

Once I solder in the diodes and put in the new electronic flasher, is the wiring as simple as:

Front left/right LED signals wired to the stock wiring cable that routed to the stock front blinkers. (with resistors of course where needed)

Bikemonkey Integrated Tail: Left/Right wires to their respected green wires on the stock rear blinker cable

Rear blinker L/R cable's ground: left open circuit? or splice into tail light ground?

Extra LED blinkers if necessary: directly wired into rear stock blinker cables. (with resistors where necessary)

Why not change the one in to dash to a Green T10 LED?

[HKr1]

Originally Posted by shadowskater

Once I solder in the diodes and put in the new electronic flasher, is the wiring as simple as:

Front left/right LED signals wired to the stock wiring cable that routed to the stock front blinkers. (with resistors of course where needed)

Bikemonkey Integrated Tail: Left/Right wires to their respected green wires on the stock rear blinker cable

Rear blinker L/R cable's ground: left open circuit? or splice into tail light ground?

Extra LED blinkers if necessary: directly wired into rear stock blinker cables. (with resistors where necessary)

Yes.. and No resistors needed with electronic flasher.

In one of your first pic's, also the schematic. The two wires coming off those resistors. They only need one going to the turn sigs. As both front/rears are already tied together

Originally Posted by jonthechron

Why not change the one in to dash to a Green T10 LED?

You would still have to feed it via two other diodes. That bulb is wired to +L/+R.

[shadowskater]

Originally Posted by jonthechron

Why not change the one in to dash to a Green T10 LED?

Haha, planning on replacing the dash with a Koso Rx2 in a couple of months, then I will be incandescent free, except the headlights. But I am planning on an HID kit at somepoint down the line .

Originally Posted by HKr1

Yes.. and No resistors needed with electronic flasher.

I was talking about resistors in the LED housing, just resistors to limit current, and create a stable LED signal.


Ordered the Integrated Tail today, and going to pop open the side signals tonight to see if I can desolder the cheap LED's off the board and replace them with some brighter high 'mcd' LED's.

[HKr1]

Originally Posted by shadowskater

I was talking about resistors in the LED housing, just resistors to limit current, and create a stable LED signal.

I got lost .

[shadowskater]

Originally Posted by HKr1

I got lost .

I was just talking about building my own LED circuit to put inside of the turn signals that are already mounted because they are dim and cheap.

According to the Wiring Diagram, the front turn signals should be receiving 12 volts and draw 10 Watts of power, using a basic laws (Ohm's Law and Power) P=IV, so 10=12*I, the current draw should be 833 mA. Typical LED's do not like 833mA, and to reduce the current flowing through the LED's you can use a resistor to set the current.

Example:

If you wanted to power these 12 LED's with the 12V battery, the ideal setup would be the picture above. If you would have put them in series (one after another) you would deprive them of enough voltage each. Yet in parallel you can keep the voltage drop across each branch equal. Say all the LED's are the same type and have a voltage drop of 2v, and want around 20mA of current to be happy. If you just stuck the LED's in there without the resistors the battery would drive as much current through them as it felt inclined to. Including the resistor limits the current as you define to protect the LED's. With a 2v drop each LED will try to eat 2v of voltage from the path it is on. Since each path is in parallel they all get 12v, so if each LED eats 2, then 12-8=4, there is 4v left in each path for the resistor to consume. V=IR, so to limit the current through each path to 20mA, you will select a resistance close enough to the calculated R to set the current. In this case 4=.02*R, R=200 Ohms. So closest standard resistor value is 220, so you would need to set R1=220. Using P=IV, you can calculate that the wattage rating on the resistor, double it for safety and get a resistor rated to at least .125 W.

Sorry for the lecture, just explaining what I plan on doing to the signals.

[shadowskater]

Just finished putting the signals back together just waiting for them to cure, so I figured I would update the thread while I wait on the tail light shipping .

I was able to just dremel off the backs of the signals so I could get to the pcb, which just popped out.


Next I desoldered all the LED's from the pcb, leaving the diode though for good measure, and replacing the all the resistors with 18Ω resistors to keep the current limiting correct from my calculations.


The LED's came in, and sadly "Hyper Orange" is hardly orange according to kingbright, the ones I ordered stated 630nm wavelength, which according to the visible light spectrum, should be right around orange. Unfortunately this is what they look like:

The accenting color on my bike is red and being as impatient as I am, I just decided to use them anyways .

After soldering all 15 in, this is how the new LED's compared to the old dim ones, pretty significant improvement, and like always the images do not give them justice.



Put the backings of the LED's back on with some non-conductive weatherproof silicon adhesive, now just waiting for them to cure so I can see how the look on the bike!

[HKr1]

Cool

[shadowskater]

Been busy lately but finally got around to shooting a quick clip of the finished product + bm integrated tail + license plate bolt lights (ts/white) [they make the license plate look like it has nipples lolz] + ddm HID kit.

Link to original page on YouTube.