Directional signals

A

arnhemmer

Senior Member
One of the club members asked me to help him with his directional signals. Currently he is using incandescent lights in the tail lights. The system works perfectly including his hazard four way. He wanted to change the tail lights to LED's . When we plugged in the LED's the directionals flashes four way like when we turn on the hazard lights. When we move the lever either right or left it just flashes four way all the time. We put 9 ohm resistors inline of each wire to the LED's to fool the flasher. That did not help. Would an electronic flasher solve the problem? He's running a 12 volt negative ground system.
 
What type of LEDs were installed ? Complete lights or just replacement type bulbs ? My thought is there is a problem with the lights that were installed. Generally additional lights, resistors or higher CP bulbs elsewhere in the system are needed for proper thermal flasher operation.

An electronic flasher can help since the system is 12v. But, I'd still look at the bulbs as the problem. Some of the Signalstat units are so full of grease that they can bleed thru,but, that generally only affects the 4 way.
 
He installed the LED tail lenses from Snyder that plug into the existing sockets. We did install the resisters inline with the rear lights. We tried the electronic flasher with no results, so I'm thinking that the Signalstat unit might be the culprit. is is very old and the flasher socket looks pretty bad like it ran hot at one time. As I said before , the standard bulbs work fine.
Thanks for the reply.
 
Did you read the instructions?
I'm thinking there is a wire between the upper and lower part of the circuit board that you need to cut on each rear light.
 
The extra wires are provided in case you need to plug in the license plate light on one side. I'm just going with a new unit and check all his wiring, to if there are any grounding problems. LED's need very little power to light up and I'm thinking that the slightest cross over will light them up as to where an incandescent won't. Thanks for the help guys I really appreciate it.
 
The resistors should be connected from each side of the T.S switch, L&R, to ground. This will put them in parallel with the bulbs and increase the load to be equivalent to incandescents, allowing the thermal flasher to operate. Doesn't explain the 4-way problem, though.

Crossed wires somewhere?

If the resistors are not grounded well, you would get cross-feed through them. 18 ohms doesn't present much to a LED, it will light.
 
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I mounted the resistors on the frame near each tail light. The LED's flashed four way before installing the resistors, so installed the resistors and still got the same results. Thinking crossed wire somewhere. Since it is not my car I think it that would be easier to start from the beginning and see what happens.
 
If you put the resistors in series with the bulbs, you just increased the resistance, you decreased the amount of current flowing to each LED which causes the thermal flasher to not work. You need to put them in parallel with the bulbs to increase the current as badpuppy said. Others have told you about cutting the wire on the back of the boards to isolate the two filaments sections of the circuit. LEDs give you much brighter light with reduced current, but they will not work with a thermal flasher unless the resistors are added.
 
I'll be checking everything from the beginning and and go through everyone's info to see if everything is in order, thanks again guys. The Ford Barn has a great group of people that are very helpful. By the way he is running 12 volts negative ground. Going to call him tomorrow to see when we can go back to the project.
 
Following Badpuppy's advice. Just printed up the wiring instructions for the load resister from Snyder's website. Had them wired incorrectly so maybe this will solve the mystery. We will find out this week.
 
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