Front LED Blinker Upgrade

I just finished converting my front blinkers to led bulbs.

Pretty straight forward swap over of course but figured some might like to see the difference they make.

Going to be bright as hell when it gets dark. Tad overkill but whats done is done.

 

 

 

Once installed its not hard to tell which is which. Of course the blinker on the right of this picture is the new one.

5oldvsnew

 

These are the LED bulbs I used :

blinkerled

JDM ASTAR Super Bright 5730 Chipsets 1157 2057 2357 7528 LED Bulbs with Projector,Amber Yellow

 

My helper Molly inspecting my work 🙂

mollyhelping

 

 

Here is a short clip of the old vs new bulbs in action.

 

Seems I’m having issue with the dash lights ( turn signal lights) glowing after just putting the bulbs and electronic flasher in. I still just have the cluster sitting in there since I’m waiting on new film to redo the cluster again.

Heres shots as the suns going down of just the parking lights on. Nothing else.

Also a pic of the dash clusters blinkers glowing.

 

bnight1

 

bnight2

 

cluster

 

I replaced the factory flasher with an led a few months ago in case I wanted to go led’s later. So the flash rates fine.

Also the led blinkers are working fine. What I’m battling with is the built in “feature” for a bad bulb warning the dash has. How it glows to let you know you have a blown blinker bulb. It thinks both blinkers are blown since the led bulbs don’t have enough resistance.

I’m trying (with no luck so far) to determine how the bad bulb feature works. The diagrams for the cluster do not show any circuitry for it and I cant find any modules or other devices for it.

But I did just read the entire “how the blinkers/side lights handle power and ground” section of the fsm. I now have a major headache and I’m not really sure I grasped what it said. Very complicated method of working the lights with one set of lights grounding thru others.

I can put resistors I’m sure inline and fix the problem but resistors waste power and create heat. Kind of a stupid method to fix it if you ask me since the whole purpose of the led lights is to reduce power consumption and even heat too.

Tomorrow I’ll change out one led bulb for the factory bulb. If I only have one turn signal light glowing in the cluster then I will know for sure that’s the problem. Doesn’t get me any closer to fixing it if that’s the problem but it will at least confirm it.

I just wish I could wrap my head around how the thing makes the dash turn signal light glow from a bad bulb. If I can do that I can figure out a good fix for it.

Still at it

Well after figuring out how to solve my problem and it works I’m faced with a decision.

I can mod my car in the dash to fix the problem I’m having or I can do a fix that everyone can use that’s plug and play using the resistors.

Since I’m as much into sharing the stuff I do on the car and helping others enjoyment wise as anything else I’m going the resistor route since that will help others.

Ordering the plug and play resistors now and will do a howto on mounting them when they come in.

Plug and Play – Not on a corvette it seems….

Ok lets get this part started with a pic of the kit as far as I could install it. This shows how it plugs into the factory socket and then the other end has its own socket. Which would of worked wonderful if the socket it provided fit the blinker housing. Which it didn’t.

kit1

 

So after removing the inline kit I ordered normal splice in resistors.

If it ain’t broke it just needs more time…

After ditching the kit and starting to splice in the resistors I found out a had a bad wire plug end on one of the factory sockets. Never fails.

As I was finishing up the soldering on the wires the negative wire’s clip came out of the bulb socket. This has happened a few times since I’ve owned the car but this time when it came out I found out why it had been falling out. The tab had worn into that holds it into the socket.

It was supposed to have a tab that sprung outward. If you look close you can see the tip looks bent but that’s actually where the other part of the metal broke off.

 

 

badclip3

 

Resistance if Futile – Long live the resistors….

Ok I have one blinker done. Though I still have to mount the resistor the frame for safe heat dissipation. Taking a break and will post pics when I’m all done.

I tested both blinker wires to know exactly for sure which wires have to have the resistor added and if both power wires were needed or not.

The resistor has to go from the black ground wire to the blueish wires which is weird logic wise.

The blueish (different tint depending on which side of the car) work the blinkers. The brown wire works the parking lights. The parking lights are what makes the dash glow. So logically the parking light wire (brown) seems to be what needed the resistor. But its actually the blinker (blueish) wire on each socket that needs the resistor.

So one wire of the resistor goes to black and one goes to the blueish wire. Then the resistor needs to be bolted to metal to make it last forever and to be safe. Its not like a fire hazard heat wise but it does get as hot as the bulb your replacing with the led.

So for conversion of stock bulbs to led’s you need led’s of course, 2 resistors (one for each front of the car blinker) and an electronic flasher module.

As I replace more bulbs with led’s if I run into changes or problems I will post them here.

The resistors I used are 50watts 6 ohms.

You only need the electronic flasher module for making the led’s blink at the right speed.

The resistors are only needed if you change out the front bulbs to keep the dash turn signals from glowing.

The two wires as I mentioned earlier are “blueish” that you will solder the wires from the resistor to. You of course can use those press on clips but I have horrible luck with those and prefer to solder the wires since that last forever and the clips don’t.

The blueish reference is light blue on the drivers side and dark blue on the passenger side.

So you solder one wire from the resistor to the light blue wire on the drivers side blinker sockets wires and the other end of the resistor is soldered to the black wire.

On the passenger side you solder one end to the dark blue wire and the other to the black wire.

Then drill a small hole in the frame to mount the resistor to it. Here is the drivers side finished.

driversdone

 

And here is the passenger side finished.

passdone

 

This completely fixes the turn signal lights glowing on the dash when the parking lights are turned on.

So this is what you have to do to have led’s in the front of your car. I know someone will recommend loaded led bulbs. I personally think that’s a very bad idea. This risk melting the housing. The method I used here has the heat against the frame thus 100% safe.

Also this will allow you to change out your tail lights later to LED without any further work needed other than just putting the LED bulbs in where the old bulbs were.

These are the resistors I used :

resistorbulbsockets

JDM ASTAR 50W 6Ohm 1157 2057 2357 7528 LED Load Resistors for LED Turn Signal Lights (Fix Hyper Flash, Warning Cancellor)

You can try to use them as they were intended or you can use just the resistors and splice them in like I did.

Flasher Module replacement

I made mention of the flasher module being upgraded earlier to an electronic flasher in case I wanted to do the LED light upgrades later on. Well this is how I did it.

You need an electronic relay for this. Here is the one I purchased.

Electronic Flasher Module

 

First you need to locate the factory flasher module. Its located inside the dash behind the bread loaf pad that is located on the passenger side of the dash. Its very close to the center console section.

Factory Flasher Module

 

After you swap out the factory flasher module for the electronic one you will need to ground the wire that comes from the new module somewhere. I went to the metal brace that runs from the windshield base to the dash like this.

Electronic Flasher Ground Spot

 

Back to Vette Mods

The Nest – All things crowz….