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Now that I have LED blinkers: strange electrical phenomenon

  • Thread starter Thread starter gert du prez
  • Start date Start date
trippivot said:
let's get the basics correct!! ok?
...

LED flashers are necessary and you are going to need 2 of them L and R and keep the sides isolated away from each other and fully remove the old flasher unit from the wiring.
Click to expand...
Not sure why you would need two flasher units. :-k

On a bike that has a single indicator bulb in the instrument panel, you will have to do some trickery there, but you can do quite fine with one flasher.

The old-style flashers actually need to see the correct amount of current running through them, not resistance. The current will heat up a strip that is made of two different metals that expand at different rates. As the current flows, the strip warms up. When one side expands more than the other, the contacts are opened. As they cool down, the strip comes back and makes contact again, turning the lights on, letting current flow again.

LEDs do not draw nearly enough current to 'trigger' the old-style thermal flashers. The "LED flashers" are actually just little electronic timers that turn the output ON and OFF at pre-determined times, and really don't care how much of a load is there. You can light up a single LED or a headlight bulb, it really doesn't matter.

Because the LED flashers are timers, they need a supply (hot) wire, a ground and the switched output. The self-cancelling systems on the larger GSes from '80 and newer have three-prong flasher units, but that third prong is NOT a ground, so it is not "plug and play". You have to make an adapter to run the hot and load wires to the new flasher, then add a ground wire.

.
 
AirCooled said:
Steve,

I will have to take your word on the correct diode count for the GS series of rectifiers, ...
Click to expand...
You were sort of correct earlier. Many full-wave rectifiers do have four diodes, but we have three-phase stators on the bikes. Each phase requires two diodes, for a total of six.


AirCooled said:
By the way, anytime you feel like correcting me, please feel free, I learn more from reading your answers to posts than just about anywhere else on the web!
Click to expand...
Not so much "correcting you", just supplying the correct information. :D

.
 
trippivot said:
let's get the basics correct!! ok?

old style FLASHER units need a specific RESISTANCE to operate -- signal just lights up? no flash? higher wattage incandescent bulb fixes that. more resistance -- test my theory put 3 bulbs in the circuit and watch it flash fast!!
Click to expand...

Steve has it right, one more thing to note is more bulbs in parallel or higher wattage bulbs is actually LESS resistance in the circuit.
 
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