The standard T5 filament bulbs are pretty dim and I could never really make out if the green and blue ones were on or off so when i found LED ones were available on Ebay I decided to try them. The light they give off is much better but each one needed a little fettling to get it to work reliably. As delivered the two legs are uninsulated and I found they were very sensitive to the position they were in or they shorted out. To overcome this I sleeved one leg with heat shrink and potted the LED back into the plastic holder with hot melt glue. The green one for the indicator only works if the PCB is rewired with diodes but there is room to mount them on the board,
The red one for low fuel is still a standard T5 bulb - I think there must be a small current flowing through the low fuel sensor at all times and that was enough to keep the LED on permenantly.
I didn't have the patience to sort all the leds and dioes, so I used 2watt bulbs over the standard 1.2. Great work there
I tried 2w bulbs and l have a 2w one as the low fuel light but the green and blue were easy to miss in daylight. I guess filament bulbs don't emit much blue light.
The trouble with these warning lights is that they are invisible in daylight and blinding at night, particularly the green 'lights on' one. The main beam warning light is probably brighter than the standard headlight on an SS!. Although one solution would be not to ride in the dark, a great solution would be if the LED's could be dimmed for riding in the dark, although as Dan says, keeping a 1.2w filament in the 'lights on' and 'main beam', and increasing the others to 2w is a good idea.
Inspired by this thread to try LED’s myself. In particular the oil warning light would be good to see if it ever came on and also the the side stand and neutral lights. These are all now fitted with LEDs and are much improved. What I really wanted though was the indicator warning lamp to be visible. I thought this might be problematic so I bought the diode kit to go with it. Having fitted it as per instructions I have one side working perfectly and the other side blinking real fast. If I reverse the wires to the diode then the opposite indicators blink rapid. This happens even if I replace with the original bulb. Any ideas anyone?
Yes, there are 2 diodes encased in the heatshrink of the kit I bought. The crimps that were supplied with the loom were too large to crimp down on the wires to the warning panel plug so I tried soldering the connections. Wondering if the heat travelled up the wire and cooked one of the diodes.
And have you rewired the pcb that holds the lights so both inputs feed the same leg of the LED and added a new wire to ground for the other leg?
I cut into the loom before the multi plug below the instrument panel. I identified the 2 wires that connect to that lamp. Then as you said, I connected the Diode loom so that both inputs feed the same leg of the LED and the other leg connected to earth. I accessed the bulb area through the top because I couldn’t remove the instrument panel due to the studs spinning in the plastic (common problem I think)
Forgot to mention, I’ve ordered another diode kit from another supplier so will try again in a day or so. (This time no soldering)
I'm running out of ideas as to what has gone wrong. I took the warning light PCB out from the back and I desolded both wires that were attached to the indicator warning bulb. Next I drilled some 1mm holes in the PCB so I could feed the legs of 2 diodes through it. I made sure they were both connected to one side of the bulb holder. The wires I disconnected in step 1 were resoldered to these new diodes and finally a new connection to ground was made on the PCB with a short jumper lead. The LED bulbs are not marked +ve and -ve so I tested it was working with a standard bulb then tried the LED version, swapping its polarity until it came on.
Success. I made the mistake of reading the circuit diagram in a pictorial sense. The circuit diagram shows 1 black/white wire and 1 green/white wire going to the indicator warning light. In reality there are 2 black/white wires. They both go to the same point on the pcb before going to the indicators. I had to cut both black/white wires, join the 2 coming up from the loom into the diode input with the cut green/white in the other diode input. The single diode output I joined to a single black/white wire to the pcb, the remaining cut black/white wire I just heat shrinked to isolate. The remaining green/white wire from the pcb is earthed. Long explanation, almost easier to do it than it is to describe it. The result is great, really bright LED indicator warning lamp in bright sunlight. No excuse for not cancelling indicators now. Thanks Dan for the initial post that inspired this small project and help along the way.
