Posted by David Sherman on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 10:56:44 :
In Reply to: Re: they will mess up your flasher posted by Clint Dixon on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 10:30:30 :
This is going to be a problem for a lot of people as they start selling LED bulbs at low prices in the regular stores. I think these guys are glossing over the problem. It's not so simple as, "As long as there is one of the old-type bulbs in the circuit." First of all, there has to be one on each side for both directions of flasher to work. Second, as we all know with ordinary bulbs and ordinary flashers, if one bulb burns out, it flashes very slowly. To get a standard 2-terminal thermal flasher to flash at the same speed as it does with ordinary bulbs, you need to give it just as much load as 2 ordinary bulbs do. Adding 4 dummy light bulbs to give the flasher the load it wants is pretty poor solution. Adding 2 resistors that dissipate roughly 20 watts apiece isn't much better. What's needed is a substitute flasher whose flashing rate doesn't depend on load current. There's an outside chance that a standard "heavy-duty" flasher just might work, since it's designed to keep flashing at the same rate when you hook up a trailer or unhook it, but even it probably needs a minimum current that's great than the LEDs would provide. All in all, I think trying these LEDs with a standard flasher is going to cause more hassle than the seller claims, and the only real solution is a completely different flasher which nobody seems to be selling yet.
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