electrical problems

[sdaffern]

on my '79 special, the turn signals on ly work at higher RPMs. at idle they come on steady. and the higher the RPM the fast the blink. is this an alternator problem or a voltage regulator problem. id like to fix this before i switch to led lights to make sure that i dont make anything worse.

steve

[TopCatGr58]

Well, yes and yes...sortof!

Hey Steve,

It may be a combination of things. The turn signal circuit draws a lot of power to run the flasher, hence the 20 amp fuse on it!

27 watts per bulb, times 2=54watts plus 7 for indicator=61, divided by 12 volts =~ 5+ amps!!! LEDs draw 0.3 amps per bulb, total with incand indicator is about 1 amp!

Many folks have reported that after a thorough cleaning of their connectors for the signals, as well as the ones for the reg/rect and the alt, that they had gotten back a fair amount of power to run the flashers at idle whereas before they either wouldn't flash, or like yours, flash very slowly!?

The LED's actually draw incredibly little power, and that's why the stock flasher unit will NOT work, it needs current draw/load to heat up the internals to make the flash mechanism break connection to flash properly. The leds draw so little, that it never heats up to flash, so the electronic or electro-mechanical one is needed that is NOT dependent on current/amp draw to flash.

So....since your flashers do work, the leds won't cause a problem aside from needing the different flasher, and loosing the self cancelling feature, but cleaning the contacts, grounds, plugs, is good insurance against gremlins in the future!

Running at higher rpms gets the alt to crank out the amps, and the volts above the base 12. You may also want to check your voltage across the battery at idle, and again at the 2500 rpms, you should be getting ~14.5 volts at high rpm, if so, then your charging system is essentially working correctly....it's just a weakness of the xs11!
T.C.