Problem with LED indicators and a Series 3

Hi all,

I'm just about to start "tweaking" Santa, my red and white Series III and have hit a bit of a problem that I'm hoping someone will be able to help me with.

Spurred on by the success of installing LED indicators on Gertie my TD5 110 Station Wagon, I thought I'd do the same on Santa.....

Replaced the rusty, falling apart indicator units with a set of Wipac LED equivalents and of course they didn't flash.

Bought some ballast resistors and connected 1 in parallel with the the NSF indicator and one in parallel with the NSR indicator. Still didn't flash but could feel the resistors getting warm.

Removed resistors and replaced flasher unit with a Wipac LED one. With engine off, everything fine. Went for a drive and tried using indicators ..... they went bonkers. Flash rate seriously high and a bit erratic.

Tried a spare voltage regulator for the feed to the Wipac flasher unit and while it was a bit better, the 1st flash was a bit erratic and sometimes wouldn't flash. Not sure if you can use a voltage regulator on your indicators.

I've got a DC/DC power supply that'll take anything from 6 volts up to 24 volts and give you a stable 12 volts out. Tried that ..... and didn't make any difference. Same as before.

Almost thinking of buying some standard bulb units and going back to them ..... unless someone can suggest what's going wrong.

Any help appreciated.

Rgds
Alex

Its my recent experiance that wipac units colours are reversed.

The wipac live goes to vehicle earth the wipac earth to the vehicle live , rememberin that leds only flow one way.

This is certainly the case on the wipacs i fitted to my own landy.

*doh* Sorry miss read , you appear to have the odd flash just not stable... Mines were just looking doa when i hooked them up conventionally.... Ignore me.

Ho top drive,
Thanks for the response. I'm now wondering if the issue is to do with my alternator output being noisy.Guess I'll look at that. To make things a wee bit more annoying, in my furtling behind the instrument binnacle,I might have dioslodged a wire coz the once working NSR LED now isn't...... and I've just discovered one of the fuses doesn't really make a good connection with the fuse holder ..... and there's all sorts of coloured cables connected to fuses that don't go anywhere. Sigh!

Question, is the indicator flash rate part of the MOT?

A

alexatnd said:

Question, is the indicator flash rate part of the MOT?

A

Click to expand...

Answer, yes 1-2 a second, but don't think they put a stopwatch on them.

Problem solved, I guess Wipac led flasher units don't like my 12 v supply. Purchased another flasher unit

2 Pin Flasher Unit For LED Indicators

... and it just worked

A

alexatnd said:

Question, is the indicator flash rate part of the MOT?

Click to expand...

yep, and from another thread I just posted in, I'm led to believe between 60 - 120 flashes per minute

dogsbody said:

Under the construction and use regulations an indicator must flash between 60 and 120 times per minute.

Click to expand...

credit to dogsbody