Flasher fail

[wolf k]

My Buss 180 flasher relay failed the other day after maybe 50 cycles in 10 years. Opened it up out of curiosity and found the tiny, hair like, heater wire broken.

Replaced it with an electronic flasher from Superbrightled.com. I tested the new flasher with the original incandescent bulbs and worked like a charm.

Then replaced the 1157 incandescents with LED replacements bulbs.







Driver side is LED, passenger side 1157 incandescent

[ERA 626]

passenger looks better

[xb-60]

Hi Wolf,
I remember your build of 2139 from back in....2014? It was around the time that I had a deposit down for an ERA FIA build. Had to eventually cancel because of difficulties with ERA doing a RHD chassis, plus importation issues.
How is your car going?

Cheers,
Glen

[wolf k]

Glen, yes 2139 doing well, no major issues, 9000 miles

About the Led vs incandescent, yes , in that photo I would say incandescent does looks better, but point is, LED is definitely brighter.

[xb-60]

I'm envious of the size of your garage!

[Gaz64]

Originally Posted by ERA 626

passenger looks better

Of course it does, it is the correct brightness from the correct wattage bulb, 5 watts.

Late model LED bulbs are way too bright.

They need to be comparison tested for brightness, which many are not.

[EM-0785]

Wolf,

I admire your car, your LED upgrade, and your dog!

We have a miniature red longhaired Dachshund who is quite the adventure hound, as seen below. We also have a black/tan.

Happy and safe motoring...Brent

[ACHiPo]

I like the brighter flashers and tail/brake lights. I'll take conspicuity over correctness every time.

I wonder if that LED flasher would solve the problem I'm having with my LED headlights--when they're on my turnsignal activates all four flashers. I've tried all kinds of things to get rid of the EMI, including ballast resistors (which get HOT), but no luck. Even pulled the 4-way flasher, still got all four going.

[wolf k]

Well ACHipo, I now have a similar issue. With the LED bulbs installed at all four corners, and when tail lamps are on, my turn signal activates both rear turn lamps simultaneously.
Front signals operate normally.

So now back to the incandescent bulbs in the rear and everything works fine.

[DanEC]

I just stuck with incandescent in front and LED tailights (rectangular LED units) and that has worked fine for me. If you have rectangular tail lights, I can't say enough good things about these - better quality than the reproductions of the originals.

Rodworx Street Rod Products | 1963/67 Shelby Cobra LED Tail Light

[Kit Coyle]

I also have a problem caused by adding LED bulbs in the rear. The car is an
ERA FIA with rectangular tail lights. I replaced the 1157 tail light bulbs with
Superbright LED replacements just to get brighter tail lights. Every thing works
fine with the headlights OFF...turn signals OK and brake lights OK. When I turn
the head lights on I get both turn signals flashing no matter which signal I
select. I checked the ground for the rear and it seems OK. The red flasher
shown in the previous post is, I assume, a "zero resistance" LED flasher.
Would this solve my problem? I did just put Lucas tri-bar headlights on the
car with H-4 halogen bulbs and have't checked yet to see what that might have
done to the existing problem!

[strictlypersonl]

The trailer relay that gives the power to the rear brake/signal light filaments requires more current than LED lights draw. The only way to make LED lights work is to add an additional parallel load to ground via a resistor.

[DanEC]

I could not get LED replacement bulbs (including Superbrights) to work in the rear of my car either - probably for exactly the reasons Bob describes. But, the LED replacement lights I referenced above (complete rectangular light fixture replacement) did work with no other changes.

[Kit Coyle]

Bob...Thank you for the answer. Not being too well versed in electrical fixes
I don't know if your solution is minor and easy to do or too difficult for me. The
lights work fine as is as long as I don't drive at night, so I may leave it since I am
a day VFR only driver anyway. Or I can just pull the LED bulbs and put the
1157 bulbs back in. I do have your ERA reflector upgrade installed so the
brake lights are not really so bad! Putting in whole new units as in the previous
post is also an option for night driving!

[Unique427]

Here's some additional input regarding switch to LED.

1) Going to LED for position/brake lights will also require a SOLID STATE RELAY.
If your current mechanical relay is (3) prong its a simple direct swap.
If your current mechanical relay is (2) prong and after relay install it does not work
or you get a hyper-flash, car's plug-in socket polarity is inverted. Mechanical relays
are not polarity sensitive. Solid state relays are and require using a couple
pigtail wires that reverse polarity. The pigtail modification fixes almost all
problems of no flash or hyper-flash situations after installing a solid state relay.

If you use a solid state relay then use of load resistors are not needed.
Load resistors can get hot enough to melt plastic so I prefer updating relays.

Also, a solid state relay has no "tick-tock" turn signal sound indication like a
mechanical so flashing dash lights will be the only cue.

2) Use AMBER and RED LED 1157's for front and back NOT WHITE.
The colored lens allows only similar color light through. If the LED is
the same color as the lens then 100% of the light transmission goes
through and the result is a much brighter/richer light. If the LED is white then
only a portion of the light transmitted gets through and the rest is reflected.
So the short answer is color match LED with lens color.

If you also want to do those Stewart-Warner or Smith gauges the bulb size is BA9
Lucas license plate light fixture is also two BA9. Superbrightleds.com has
BA9S LED bulbs in various colors. I found these to be the brightest at 96 lumens,
will fit in the sockets and are dimensionally similar to the tiny incandescent bulbs.
Does not matter if they are single or double wire bulb sockets.
Bulb sockets are held in by friction and with a little coaxing will simply pop out.
I was able to do the entire gauge cluster without removal.

Superbrightleds.com bulb description + part number:
COOL WHITE (6100K) = BA9S-CWHP5
WARM WHITE (2700K) = BA9S-WWHP5
RED = BA9SRHP5
BLUE = BA9SBHP5
AMBER = BA9SAHP5
GREEN = BA9SGHP5

White takes 0.10 amps each and colored take 0.07 amps each.

If you need a source for 1157 LED items:

iBRIGHTSTAR Extremely Bright 1157 BAY15D LED on Amazon.com:
AMBER = 1157-3014-66Y
RED = 1157-3014-66R
WHITE = 1157-3014-66W

These draw 0.26 amps each.