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Led parking & tail light bulbs ?'s

4x4blaze

4x4blaze

That's not going to work
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Hey guys, it's been a while since I've been on here! But slowly piecing my 75 K5 together - and therefore, running into more issues!

To start, I'm honestly not a huge fan of LED bulbs.. I always thought the old incandescent bulbs gave it an old truck look.. And you can always spot an old car from miles back just by the way the tails looked! But, I ended up putting clear tail lenses on my K5 and the red painted incandescent bulbs just weren't cutting it, so I converted the entire truck to LED. Considering it's a fully restored resto mod, I think it pulls it off alright.

But now, I'm having issues with blinkers.. They hyperflash and my indicators on the dash stay on.. I understand that you typically have to splice resistors in, but I was wondering if there are any other potential solutions that don't require hacking my new wiring harness? I've tried changing the flasher fuses, but didn't seem to help. I'm far from being the greatest at wiring, and when I had my wiring guy do the truck, I did not expect to install leds.. Additionally, the entire harness is shrink wrapped as if it's all just one wire.. It is possible to remove, but would rather not.. So, any suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

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I assume all the lights are wired the same regardless of vintage...or close enough. Side markers front and rear, parking light/blinkers in the grille.

You cannot use "cheap" LED's in the side marker or front turn signal locations. Those bulb locations reverse polarity depending on whether the headlights are on and blinkers are used. LED's are generally not made polarity non-specific, so you either have to buy the right bulbs (edit: which the one time I saw them, were something like $35 for a 194 bulb), or put incandescent in. Not sure that this alone should cause hyperflash though. IIRC it should just result in the lights not working depending on what you are trying to do and how they are placed in the socket.

I've had good results using an adjustable electronic flasher, cheaply found on eBay last I looked. I tried a plain electronic flasher however that didn't work. The adjustables have a knob that allows you to change how fast or slow the flasher "blinks". I'm running a mixture of LED's and incandescent (my trailer is LED as well) and I have no issues with the blink speed with the adjustable flasher.

IMO the COB type LED's provide similar lighting spread to incandescent. Generally I don't find the LED's to provide the same amount of lighting in these trucks however. Only exception being the brake lights. For some reason the red seems to work well there. The opaque lenses do not help the LED's.
 
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The factory flashers work using current draw through the flasher to cycle on and off. I've had good luck retrofitting vehicles using "LED flashers". The only thing I tell people to look for in a solid state flasher (an LED flasher) is a separate wire coming off the flasher that is tied to ground. A solid state style flasher simply pulses it's output on and off, regardless of current draw. What I've found is that some of these flashers don't get enough voltage in the circuit when they rely on the output side of the flasher as a ground. Having a separate ground for the circuitry in the flasher ensures that they work reliably. I don't like using resistors for two reasons: First, they completely defeat the point of energy savings of using and LED because they're pulling a bunch of current to get the flasher to work. Second, those high-watt resistors can get really hot turning the current into heat. I think a Grote P/N:44891 should work.
 
Try putting incandescent back into the front side marker sockets. The factory wiring has it so that they are not to a chassis ground.
I am guessing that the signal indicators are on when you turn on the marker lights, but off when the marker lights are off, yes or no?
The front side markers are wired to both the marker AND the turn signal circuits with a single element style bulb. This works fine for incandescent, but not LED. And it also doesn't give enough load to a factory flasher.
Hopefully this explains a little more of what @dyeager535 was saying.
 
Hey guys, sorry for the extremely delayed reply, I really need to get better at that:confused1: I work construction and we have been having some crazy long days, along with 24hr startups and all that fun stuff.. Plus a 5 hour license test I've been studying for! So the truck, along with CK5 have been on the backburner..

But, I really appreciate all the replies @dyeager535 , @arcansawdave , @6872xtc and , @Chickntrk !!

I took all of your guys advice and purchased the Grote LED flasher.. everything worked fine... until I turned the headlights on! So back to the drawing board. Then, I did some research and purchased some United Pacific part #90652 with polarity reversing bases. Before installing them, I wired the grounds up and plugged them in without the reversing bases... And just like that, everything worked! Blinkers, hazards, lights on, lights off, everything! The only issue is the directional lights on the dash.. They glow as if I have a bulb out.. But, that's it.. Any ideas how to fix it? I was planning on trying to swap the led 194's in the front sidmarkers for standard incandescent to see if that would fix the issue.. If it does, I was considering putting a resistor inline with a "dummy" plug.. purchase a 194 male end, wire in the resistor, and then purchase a c10 sidemarker socket.. So then I wouldn't have to splice into the factory wiring I'd it didn't work..

What do you guys think?

Definitely food for thought!
 
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