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Tourer
Posts: 575
Spirit Lake IA "Birthplace of Victory Motorcycles" | Starting a new thread so as to not hijack OutdoorDave's thread.
Thought I had a major breakthrough yesterday concerning my rear LED conversion . . . here's a little background:
Went to clear tail lamps from Arizona Victory. LED's they sold me (25 LED pods) were not quite bright enough. Also, my cruise control mysteriously stopped working (I have read that sometimes this happens without load equalizers installed). After lots of waiting for stock to come in, I got some 92 LED units from VLED's. 2 Ambers for turns and 4 reds for stop. These bad boys are sweet and very bright. Only issue now is cruise control and the fact that Victory OEM design uses the top signal lights also as running lights. Now that I'm amber up top, it is illegal to use amber running lights on back of vehicles. I resolved this problem by removing center prong in turn signal socket . . . now ambers just come on during signal and are off the rest of the time.
Sweet! I fire things up in garage and lamps work beautifully. Only remaining issue now is that my cruise is disabled and the minor annoyance of the fast blinks (could live with that though).
I pulled out my Kuryakyn 2 amp load equalizer (#604865) that Arizona Victory sent with the tail lamps. It has 2 violet and one black wire. Per instructions, I tap one violet to LH and one to RH turn wires back at the harness (one wire was blue and one blue/red stripe). Tapped black to one of the three ground wires. Fired the bike up and she worked beautiful! Turn signals were back at the slow blink and all lamps functioned properly. I decide to take the bike out for the first time since the snow began to fall (since it was 43 degrees) to check out cruise and to test my Utopia back rest. Backrest was awesome, but cruise did not work AND flashers were back to the fast rate. What! Got it back to garage and found that all lighting in the rear end is out except for running lights on top of trunk. Lighting on front of bike is OK. I thought no biggie, maybe I blew a fuse. Checked fuse and it appears to be OK.
Couple of questions: - If fuse isn't blown, what else would cause all rear lighting to go out?
- What would happen if ground came loose on tap of load equalizer?
- To get my cruise back working would I need to put 2 amp load equalizers on every pair of LED's?
- Any advice for getting my bike back in working order?
Any help would be appreciated!
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Visionary
Posts: 3773
Pittsburgh, PA | thanks for sharing your experience.. you just convinced me to NOT go the led route.. i wish you the best of luck in figuring it all out.. Im sure you will.. im a person that dont like hassles and this to me sounds like a hassle for some leds.. |
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Tourer
Posts: 575
Spirit Lake IA "Birthplace of Victory Motorcycles" | The cool thing about this site is that someone will come through with some helpful advice. We all help each other out . . . I'm kind of looking at this as an adventure . . . I'm also getting to know my bike better as I tinker with it |
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Cruiser
Posts: 256
| I have the leds in the tails and things are fine. Just put in 10 ohm wire wound resistors in parallel with all the leds. Cruise works, flash is normal and I am happy. I purchased the leds that flash 5 times with brake application. Very pleased. |
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Tourer
Posts: 575
Spirit Lake IA "Birthplace of Victory Motorcycles" | Prime Power - 2010-03-14 3:01 PM
I have the leds in the tails and things are fine. Just put in 10 ohm wire wound resistors in parallel with all the leds. Cruise works, flash is normal and I am happy. I purchased the leds that flash 5 times with brake application. Very pleased.
Could you elaborate? Where did you get resistors? How many amps do they pull? Does that mean you tapped in 6 resistors? Where did you locate them? Any help would be appreciated! |
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Tourer
Posts: 575
Spirit Lake IA "Birthplace of Victory Motorcycles" | Primepower,
Is this what you used? http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062291
Do they generate lots of heat?
Edited by Man314 2010-03-14 4:46 PM
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Cruiser
Posts: 256
| Those are it. I wired them in under the seat. You can see where four wires go into 6 and that is where I tapped in. I then took them to a ground and then tucked them up in a hole towards the front under the seat. They do get hot but should be fine there. As far as wattage, I think (not sure) my leds are 5 ohms and the resistors are 10 ohms so in parallel it would be 43 watts each. More I think than the stock bulbs but no problems. I don't go by Prime Power because I like transformers or something. High Voltage Electrician with Instrumentation Specialty for the Army and now I am in school for Watercraft Engineering for the Army. I bet the LED's are of a higher resistance but I'm not pulling them out to check right now. What I do know is that they look great, flash with brakes and my cruise and flash rate is normal.
Edited by Prime Power 2010-03-14 5:36 PM
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Tourer
Posts: 575
Spirit Lake IA "Birthplace of Victory Motorcycles" | Thx Prime Power! Nothing wrong with Transformers . . . especially if they get to hang out with Megan Fox! |
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Cruiser
Posts: 208
Wichita, Kansas | PP - You won't get anywhere measuring the resistance of the diode. As with any junction type semiconductor, the resistance depends on the current. And the more current you allow through, the lower the resistance gets - which means they have negative resistance!!!!! It's what makes them work. The only thing that counts is how much current they draw. If you measure that, then use Ohm's Law, you'll get the effective resistance at 12 VDC which is what you're after anyway. |
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Cruiser
Posts: 256
| I was going to put my multimeter in series with it and measure current. I would like to know total wattage draw on what I have. I also wouldn't say a negative resistance. Just change depend on current. Never negative, you'd be rich if you could make a conductor with negative resistance.
Edited by Prime Power 2010-03-15 4:56 AM
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Tourer
Posts: 575
Spirit Lake IA "Birthplace of Victory Motorcycles" | I found what was causing my rear end to black out (that didn't sound right did it?)
When I was adding load resistor to back of harness I pull the wiring back an inch or so. Everything was working when I put things back together. Had troubles getting my seat to "seat" properly. Turns out that the seat put pressure on the large electrical connector on the RH of seat and caused it to unplug. Must have stuck up and repositioned when I pulled the wiring harness back. I plugged it in and all works well! Blinkers blink slow, my amber running lights have been disabled, and the 92 LED's are sweet!
Only issue is that I sheared off the 2 blue wires (one has a stripe) on the far RH side of harness connector. Don't know what they are as everything seems to be working. I'll checked my wiring diagram and it looks like it is the TS Control Output? Wonder why everything appears to be working with these wires sheared? I'll get them stripped and reconnected.
I took my bike out and cruise still does not work. Wonder if I need to put another couple of 2 amp resistors in line with each pair of stop lamps? Thoughts?
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Problems In LED Land