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Originally Posted by 78SCRSMAN
The charge light you say needs to pass current both ways to work makes sense... I hadn't thought of that but can you explain why the courtesy lights need to and what's your idea to fix the problem???
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My bad, - I *thought* that the courtesy lights had 3 positions; off, switched (by the door) and constantly on. But I don't ever use them; they've been switched off since I replaced the door switch on the driver's side 4 years ago.
And I just checked with the original (10W! ten freakin' watts! Ow! That sucker gets hot!) bulb and it behaves the same way as the LED; switched by the door when the switch is in the center position.
Nothing to do there
Quote:
Originally Posted by 78SCRSMAN
***I just used warm white bulbs here as all of the indicators have colored lenses.
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That'll work too.
The filter being in the same range of the spectrum as the light from the LED will allow more light to pass through; which may be helpful for lamps that appear too dark - e.g. - the main beam indicator, for example, seems to darken with age. Certainly, my main beam indicator (which has a blue LED in it) was never so bright.
One anomaly - I could have sworn that the green "lights" indicator would go out on main beam before, or at least go so dim I didn't notice it. With LEDs, both the green and main beam indicator are lit full bright, I guess there's enough current flowing it just stays lit. That's not a problem (for me), I just mention it.
Matching the colors to the filter certainly makes them very bright and vibrant... Which I really like for some things (fuel, oil warning lamps) - but LEDs are way too bright for some things (I left out the "FAN" label on the top left of the heater controls altogether, for example - it lit up so bright as to be distracting
).
If they're too bright at night, using white LEDs may work to subdue some of the colored ones - but when using bulbs in the flasher repeaters, they were sometimes kind of hard to see in bright sunlight, soooo....
Quote:
Originally Posted by 78SCRSMAN
***I ran across a thread awhile back that I think addresses this issue. The relay gets replaced with an electronic type (for use with LED turn signal bulbs) then the ground on the back of the tach is piggy backed to the indicator bulbs... problem is I don't know if he was using LEDs for the indicator lamps so now I'm really stumped. I'm wondering if a resistor placed between the two would correct this???
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That's actually a different issue, I think - when you replace the indicator bulbs in the front/rear lights with LEDs, the thermal-based flasher units need a certain load (current draw from the bulbs) to operate; without it, they'll either hyper-flash (flash really quickly, like you have a blown bulb) or not flash at all. The electronic flasher units work around that WITHOUT you needing to put load resistors across the indicator bulbs (so they draw the same current as the filaments you replaced - thus negating one of the advantages of LEDs).
Certainly with regular bulbs in the indicators themselves and LED repeaters in the tach, they flash at the expected speed.
See, what I get is a flash on the right repeater when the EMF collapses on the left circuit, that's about as long/bright as the flash on the left repeater. Which seems odd.
And a flash of the right repeater on the "off" cycle of the hazard switch (e.g. when the hazard switch isn't lit and the indicators themselves are).
If the other (left) side repeater behaved the same, I could believe it was "normal" - but I'm really suspicious, because it doesn't...