I read a couple months back of people having difficulty getting front turn signal LEDs to work. Now I am to the point where I am doing this mod.

I made the bulbs myself using the circuit boards in some cheap LED flashlights I bought at Advance Auto. I replaced the white LEDs with orange ones, put in a 100 ohm current limiting resistor (am probably going to make it 56 ohms instead) and proceeded to bench test it.

I put my + voltage to the tip of the bulb and my - to the case. The bulbs worked perfectly!

Today I went to put the bulbs into my new clear bumper lights and Lo' and behold ... nothing.

To make a long story shorter, I discovered that, for some unknown reason, Nissan chose to stray from the typical convention (tip-positive, case-negative) and make the front turn signal sockets just the opposite. Obviously, the old incandescent couldn't care less but the LEDs certainly do.

I depinned the connector leading into the socket and reversed the locations et voila! a working LED turn signal.

This does not preclude the need for load resistors somewhere in the circuit to keep the flasher going at the same rate but from what I read in the past it was quite the mystery so I hope this helps put it to rest. Other people in the past had mentioned the polarity issue but I don't think anyone mentioned the proper conclusion.

 

In for some pictures on this.

 

I want to see pictures too.

 

Finally!!! I encountered this problem a while back and finally someone solved it. Do you have any pics showing what you had to do to make them work?

 

I just want to see pics of the work.

 

I've only done one bulb thus far so there is clear oppurtunity to take photos of the next one. Does anyone require photos of the socket connector mod or is that pretty well understood?

 

I just want to see what yours look like. I make customs leds and can always use a new idea. Thats all.

 

post a pic damnit.

 

Please bear with me, I have a lot going on at the moment but I hope I can have some pictures done by the end of the weekend. I guess I'll have to open a Photobucket account so you all can see them.

A couple of notes in the meantime;
The flashlights I mentioned use nine LEDs and they are, of course, white.
They typically cost about $2.50.
You could save a little work by using the white LEDs in an amber housing.

 

Ive been told white LEDs will shine white right through a colored lens. You may have to use colored LEDs regardless of the lens.

 

nah you can use white leds behind a amber lens. For the most part it will remain amber just like oem.

 

this resistor you used better be like a 50 watt one

 

You are not wrong in so far as the original bulbs are 27 watts and as such causes the flasher to source 4.5 amps (54 watts total). Since the duty cycle is only about 50% I would think a well-cooled 25 watt resistor would do. My brother suggested using an original bulb or one of appropriate wattage somewhere in the circuit where it can't be seen or, if you're so inclined, where it can be seen.

 

What the hell does everyone need pics of? All you do is swap the two wires going to the bulb...

 

why would you run them at 50% duty.. are you still using the cars flasher or no?
50% duty would lower their output but i would want them as bright as possible.. especially the rears..

i just replaced my flasher with a non load one... called it a day..
before i did have 2 50 watt resistors in parallel which did get a little warm but just decided to get the flasher..

 

I want to see what the hell the LEDS look like.

 

What is it they say about great minds? I ended up getting the same kind of flasher you spoke of and that did make life a lot simpler though it wasn't plug-n-play.

On my car, which as far as I can tell, is original, I couldn't just plug in the new flasher and make it go (just my luck). As it turns out I needed to swap two of the leads going to the flasher and even after I did I started blowing fuses (even a 20 amp!). I took the flasher apart and found two parts of the construction that would come into contact when activated effectively shorting out and blowing the fuse. I only had to bend back one of the offending pieces of metal and now it works like a champ.

Obviously, I shouldn't have to have done these things but I enjoy the challenge. I also found out that the original flasher is electronic and not the classic bimetallic type. My brother pointed out to me the wire that senses the current and thereby controls the rate of the flashing. He also mentioned that the wire is probably measured in mili-ohms (it just looks like a piece of solid 12 gauge stainless steel wire) and as such is beyond most of our abilities.

As far as the 50% duty cycle, that means they are only on half of the time (1 second on, one second off) but they would be at full brightness of course. Your experience with the 50 watt load resistors seems to indicate that it was not as good a way to go anyway.

 

ok cuz you kind of confused me.. my LED tails i have variable duty cycle boards i made so that i can vary the brightness to them so stop and headlights on look different..


as far as the flasher i just went to autozone and got a generic one it works great..

 

Really? I would think that the narrower output spectrum that LEDs have would result in poor output behind a differently colored lens.

 

how are the whites more narrow? It would ultimately depend on teh leds you choose. One color does not mean its more narrow at all.

 

No, I mean the nature of LEDs. Since they're based on energy level transitions, and not blackbody sources like incandescents are. Theoretically, a LED has a narrower FWHM than incans, which should result in more decreased performance through a tinted lens.

However, in the case of white LEDs, I suppose the phosphor coating gives you more output bandwidth. Still, I would think that a red LED shining through a red lens should give a far superior output to a white LED shining through a red lens, since all of the red LED's emissions are in a narrow frequency band, that will be minimally impeded by the lens tint. Whereas the white LEDs mostly output in the blue spectrum, with the phosphor coating giving some yellow/orange output.

 

I get what you are saying but the viewing angle is dependent on the led itself. Red leds would deff be bright thru a red lens but a white led can and should be just as bright. The red led will have a weird red color vs the white also thats why we use red orange leds in tail light retro's.