issues with lighting/ turn signals

[mwalter2747]

i couldnt find any other spot to pose this question, so i just went with electrical.
heres the issue im having: last fall i installed a set of LED turn signals on the back of my 82 gs850gl. the shipping for my second set for the front end got delayed and didnt get installed until a couple days ago. when i first put on the rear ones in place of the old (still aftermarket) turn signals that werent LED, there was no issue at all. however, when i went to install the LED ones in front, i noticed that now when i go to turn on a signal, all 4 lights turn on and stay solid. doesnt matter if i hit left or right, all 4 shine solid. so, i threw the old ones back on front a bit ago, and its all back to normal. i read somewhere that i need to install a resistor, but if thats so, why do the rear ones work without one?

any kind of help would be greatly appreciated.

one more interesting fact about this issue: with all 4 led lights installed, when i had an indicator selected, with all 4 lights on, if i then turned on the headlight switch, the right side lights would go out. not sure if its relevant, but definitely odd.

[tom203]

Does/did this model have a turn signal control unit ?- in original setup, turn signals were "cancelled" after a bit. You would have noticed this before you opted for LEDs. A PO might have bypassed it.

[mwalter2747]

i havent seen any sort of control unit, other than the one on the handlebar. when i got the bike, a lot of the wiring was routed through an old wind jammer fairing, that has since been removed.

[tom203]

Looks like the 82's had the turn signal control unit, but who knows.... Have you see this wiring diagram from Basscliff's?

http://www.dslextreme.com/users/bikecliff/images/80GS850GT_wiring_color-new.png

so you have two seperate turn signal indicators on dash? And they worked before the front LED's were installed?

[ShadowFocus603]

My 750L had the same issue with all 4 coming on. It doesn't have the TSCU though. In my case I had to install the Kuryakyn diode to remedy the issue.

[Guest]

Your bike has a single light in the instrument panel that tells you the turn signals are on. That bulb is wired to have one wire connected to each side's turn signals. When the signals are activated, the small indicator bulb would not pass enough current to light the bulbs on the other side, so it bascially used the bulbs on the "off" side as ground wires. With your LED signals, they require far less current to light, so the indicator bulb simply passed the current to the other side so they ALL light up. Question: does the indicator in the panel light up?

It is possible to fix your situation, but it will require some re-wiring in the instrument panel. Basically, you need to find the leads to the turn signal indicator bulb. Connect one of them to ground, install two diodes back-to-back between the signals on both sides, then connect the other indicator wire between the diodes. This has been discussed before, with a nice picture shown, but I don't have access to pictures right now.