Blinkers/signal lights blinking too fast
 

As the title said, my signal lights are blinking too fast as if one of the bulb is off (when none is ). This happen to both sides L & R.
The weird thing is that when I switch the hazzard lights on, they seem to work just fine.

Basically I've just got the car out from the panel beater. Before it was in the panel beater, i took the dash out. This include lowering the steering wheel shaft but I didn't touch nor unplug any wirings in that vicinity. Also if my memory serves me right, the signal lights were running OK when I drove the car on the way to the panel beater.

I did however replace the front lights to RE's 99 with LEDs.
At the moment, I have a couple of cables hanging near the front bar from the old fog lights covered with electrical tape. But I have double check it, no rip whatsoever on the electrical tapes.
I also replaced the rears with a s8 tail lights although I must omit this chance since the blinkers have been blinking like crazy before the tail lights were on. ( I did a test on the 99 lights at the panel beater when they haven't put any taillights on).

Does any of you with RE 99 spec blinker have this sort of problem aswell? Could it be the led signals?

Any ideas on how to probably solve this matter?


Many thanks

Yans

I'm just throwing this out as a possibility, but I really don't know how the timing of the blinker is controled.

I *assume* that it is some RC circuit with timing logic like a 555 chip that toggles a relay, which is what you hear clicking when the signals come on/off. Working with that assumption, if you were to change the R, that is, if your new LED lights have significantly less resistance than the OEM lights, you will subsequently see a reduced "t" -- hence the fast blinking. This is the same thing that happens when one of your bulbs goes dead. The R is cut in half so the remaining light blinks twice as fast.

You could always measure the resistance of your old lights and new lights with a multimeter and see. The solution then would be to add a resister inline with your new turn signals to increase the blink time based on the difference in resistance between your old lights and new ones.

Again, just a hypothesis, but it makes sense to me!

Relay's going bad

I would definately try this first and then replace the relay if they seem to have close to the same resistance.

It's your LEDs. Not enough power is getting pulled from the LEDs so it thinks that one of the lights has burned out. Happened with my 99 spec front end with LEDs also. You need to get the electronic flashers from www.v-leds.com for the fix.

Do you happen to know if the stock housing (RE's) can fit normal signal bulb?

I tried to swap the signal bulb from my Mazda 6 but stupid housing and stupid me couldnt managed to get it opened.

On another note however, did yours blink on a normal pace when you switch the hazzards on?

I'm not too sure about RE's housing but I'm sure they will fit. And when I turned on my hazards, they were still blinking at a fast rate rather than the normal rate.

Its the LEDs that you are using for 99 specs. I'm using white 194 LED bulbs and mine do the same thing. BasaltFD is correct its because the LED bulbs don't pull as much power as the stockers. I actually like the result, gives the JDM effect. Plus using the LEDs results in a bright white output. Before people would have to buy a seperate control box to get there turn signals to do the same.

I have not done this, but it seems really likely that you could just buy a resistor and run it in parallel with the blinker bulb to control the blink rate:
1. measure the resistance of the stock bulb you replaced (assuming you want to get back to the stock blink rate)
2. measure the resistance of the LED replacement (LEDs only flow electricity in one direction, so swap the leads if you get a reading of infinite resistance the first time)
3. use the parallel resistance formula to choose a resistor that you will connect in parallel: http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/resistan.htm
(You will also need to make sure the resistor you choose has an adequate wattage rating. Choose the resistance first, and then figure out how many watts it needs to handle, here's a table of common values with the forumulas in the header row, in case you need to calculate it for a different resistance:
V R I=V/R P(Watts)=VI [or P=V^2/R]
12 10 1.2000 14.4
12 47 0.2553 3.06
12 100 0.1200 1.44
12 150 0.0800 0.96
12 470 0.0255 0.31
12 1000 0.0120 0.14
12 2200 0.0055 0.07
12 4700 0.0026 0.03 )
4. Buy the resistor(s) you need at Radio Shack or Fry's
5. connect the resistor in parallel across the bulb holder
6. enjoy

Even if you don't know anything about electricity, a little effort should get you through this. And you'll learn something in the process.

-Max