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Hi I put led 6volt bulbs in my rear turn singles thinking they may be brighter than the incandescent ones, I left the incandescent in the front. 46 6 volt. Of course I have hyper flash now. Ì connected a resistor I had 25w 10rj. 1 wire to turn signal wire and the other to ground. When I did that I had no signal at all. I am not very electrically inclined so any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Sounds like you shorted the LED out if you went from signal wire to ground (parallel with the LED?) What do you mean by 10rj? If it's 10 ohms, that's probably way too much, but I've never done LED resistors before, so I may be all wet. The resistor needs to be in series, according to the web, so signal wire to resistor to LED to ground. Or signal wire to LED to resistor to ground.

10rj was on the resistor not sure what it means. I spliced one wire from resistor into the signal wire and the other wire from resistor to ground. That's what I understood from watching y tube video. Could be wrong though

A resistor wired from the signal wire to ground will make the flasher run even faster. Like Kevin said, the resistor needs to be in series with the LED to reduce current and therefore decrease the flash rate.

"In series" means:
a. signal wire to one side of the resistor
b. other side of the resistor to the LED lamp
c. LED lamp case grounded


10 ohms may not be enough to reduce the flash rate much. Depends on the LED and the flasher. A better answer may be to use a solid state flasher that flashes at the same rate no matter the load.

46 Chev has it wired correctly. The resistance is probably wrong. I have never done this so I don't know just how much resistance you need. I think Hanlon has the right idea of using a electronic flasher but I don't know if it is available in 6 volts.

George

Paralleling the LED with a resistor would indeed cut the current thru the LED, but who knows how much. It would be very sensitive to the resistance value, and I agree the resistance used (unknown) is likely wrong. The idea is to make the resistance in the circuit the same as an incandescent bulb would be, and that's much easier with the resistor in series with the LED.

HERE is the real solution. No screwing around with parallel or series resistors (you'd need one resistor for each bulb, including wiring).

Do the electronic flashers make a clicking noise? (so you don't drive along for miles with the flasher going)

This one does, but depending on how rattly your truck is and if your hearing aid batteries are fresh ....

The 4th wire (pigtail) needs to be connected to ground. It will work with any 6 volt two or three pin plug.

Good one, Bill!

If the flasher is flashing quickly, that generlly indicates too much load on the flasher. Most standard flashers operate as a thermal breaker. Current causes a metal part to heat up, it bends, breaks the circuit (blinks off), cools off, flexes back to normal shape, reconnects the circuit, light goes on, repeat. The more current, the faster it blinks. the less, slower or not at all.

So flashing quickly could be a bulb too big, too many bulbs, or most likely, a wire touching ground somewhere (shorting out). You see this happen frequently when a trailer with lights is hooked up to a standard flasher and they blink fast. i.e. too much load, too many bulbs.

LEDs have almost no load, therefore draw very little current, and therefore generally the flasher doesn't know it is there, and does not blink, or very slowly.
To fool the flasher and make it think there is an incandescent bulb in there, a resistor is placed in parallel with the LED, generating more load. Now the flasher is happy and flashes. It thinks a regular incd bulb is in there. By my caluclations, for a 6 v system, that resistor should be about 18 ohms, 3 watt. That would generate about the same current as an incd bulb.

Putting a low value resistor in series with the LED would have almost no effect at all since there is little current and therefore little voltage drop across the resistor.

BUT your flasher blinks fast with an LED. Something is off. That is the opposite of what should happen. I would suggest getting it to work correctly with a standard incd bulb, then substitute the LED. Or try LED on one side and incd on the other and see what happens.

An electronic flasher does not use a thermal strip. It has a counter that breaks the circuit at a number of milliseconds (usually you can set this time with a little screw). And no, it generally does not make a sound, but there may be some out there that do.

Another remedy you may want to consider is a flasher specifically designed for LEDs. It does have a ground wire on the flasher that needs to be, well, grounded. It is NAPA EL13L1.

Thanks, just ordered one.