Hello,
I am new to the forum and recently bought a 2001 GS500. I decided to swap out the indicators to the mini bullet style ones (no led) and the bulbs it came with, which were smaller. I also swapped out the dash lighting to LED at the same time. At first all the flashers would work apart from flashing too quickly. Then one day, the dash indicator (still led) stopped working and all flashers went off at once like hazard lights when left or right indicators are used.
So I decided to use the stock bulb in the bullet indicators. This did absolutely nothing. Then I went ahead and used incandescent bulbs for all the dash bulbs and the gauges as well. Still no avail, although now I can see the filament from the dash indicator for the turn lamps glow ever so slightly when using the turn signals. I also tried using a new flasher relay (el12) which made things worse. So I went back to the stock relay. At this point I'm at a loss and have exhausted all the ideas from search which all refer to LED indicators.
What am I missing?
Thank you
Sounds like maybe a grounding issue. LED or not, the power needs a complete loop to make the circuit. If it can't go through the normal path (to ground) it'll try to find another way, like through your dash lights. "Floating" grounds can cause all sorts of funky gremlins, which is what you seem to be having.
I don't know where all the grounds are on this bike (yet) but maybe someone else will chime in with that info. Good place to start is always with the battery.
Back to the beginning... you can't just plug in LED turn signal indicator in place of the incandescent bulb because the way it works is by switching polarity. You need to put a pair of diodes in and rewire the socket so the + side is connected via the new diodes (like 1N4001s will work) to each of the original wires and the ground side of the connector connected to some other ground, like the ground for the other dash lights.
The rest of the problem may have happened if you used LED turn signals with no load resistor. And in that case you might have blown a fuse or fried something else because the LEDs with no load resistor are far lower resistance than the bulb.
The bike only has a single fuse and a relay for indicators. What else could be fried? The bike starts and runs. I'm trying to find a new TL110 relay to see if that's the issue, but it seems they don't make these anymore.
Thanks for the response. Didn't think LED would be such a big issue. Lol
Well, this is embarrassing. :oops: I had wired up the indicators like how one would in a car or any other electronic device; dark color is negative and light color means positive. Looked at the wiring diagram and realized my dumb. Did the switcheroo on the right side indicators and all is well now. :woohoo:
Yeah the LED bulb for the turn signal indicator will still require a diode mod to work.
The "everything worked but suddenly stopped" is not really explained by reversing the polarity of one (or more) of the turn signals.
The fast-blink is because you are using an ordinary turn signal relay, get a solid-state and it will blink as expected. I had to rewire the connector on mine to get a solid-state relay to work.
The bike was not designed for LED anything. LEDs are diodes and also produce much more light per watt than incandescent bulbs so they basically don't behave at all like halogen bulbs. You can't just swap them and expect everything to work as normal. The reason in some modern cars that swapping "just works" is because everything is computer controlled anyway but with old analog/switch/bimetallic etc. stuff like a GS500, it requires some ingenuity and redesigning to get it to work.
[FWIW all of my GS500 lighting is LED... BTDT).
By indicators i meant the turn signal lamps itself. So if you look at the wiring diagram, I hooked up the black and white wire to the green wire instead of green to black. Same goes for the back.
And I am a victim of the LED hype (except for headlights) as well. I did switch everything back to conventional bulbs except for the gauges.