Have a little question.

[Yard Dogg]

Thanks. I took the cover off the OEM flasher and am seeing some kind of resistor or maybe a capacitor even, IDK. There must be a simple way to modify it to blink with less load.

It is a green tubular type and says 150 (Ohm symbol) J, also 1W, and a 10 and looks like a lower case a.

[natemoen]

Sorry Nate, but one end has to be grounded. You're trying to add load, putting the resistor in series with the light will reduce the load.

You are correct Steve. My bad.

[jwhughes3]

With speakers....wiring 8 ohm speakers in series means 16 ohms, in parallel means 4 ohm load and a good way to blow an amp if too many are wired and resistance drops too low.

The electromagnetic impulses have multiple pathways which reduce resistance, like opening another checkout stand at WalMart reduces waiting.

Why is it not the same with the light resistor - wiring it in series to add resistance?

John

[CaptonZap]

With speakers....wiring 8 ohm speakers in series means 16 ohms, in parallel means 4 ohm load and a good way to blow an amp if too many are wired and resistance drops too low.

The electromagnetic impulses have multiple pathways which reduce resistance, like opening another checkout stand at WalMart reduces waiting.

Why is it not the same with the light resistor - wiring it in series to add resistance?

John

John, don't let these guys confuse you with all this talk about ohms resistance. What they are after is watts per unit time.
Watts is volts times amps. And is a unit of power. You buy watts from the power company, not volts or amps. An analogy is that watts is gallons of water, and amps is how many gallons are going by the faucet per second.

But you can measure watts by using volts and amps. Watts = volts X amps
To alter the watts, you can change either the volts or the amps.
If the volts remain the same, 12 V, and you want to change the amps, you have to deal with Ohm's law, which state that the Volts = the amps x the resistance in the circuit. So, if the volts remain the same, the only way to change the amps is to change the resistance. As the resistance goes up, the amps go down, so that the product always equals the volts.

So these guys are playing with the resistance as a means of getting the watt flow of a high resistance (low watt) bulb, and, by adding a resister, get the total flow to equal the watt flow of the stock bulb.
( In this case, I am using watts and amps in the same way, which is not technically correct. Watts are a measure of the total number of electrons that get transferred. Amps are the number that go past a given point in a given amount of time. In this case, since they are the cause of the effect that we are concerned with, I use either term to describe the arrangement of the components that we can use to alter the outcome).

Resisters in series, (one after the other), add their resistance values, and the total resistance goes up. And the amps, and thus the watts, goes down.
Resisters in parallel, (side by side), see the total resistance go down, and the amps, and thus the watts, go up.

Well, maybe I confused you with an attempt at an explanation.


One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in this discussion, is that resisters have a watt rating, and if it is exceeded, the resister gets hot, and can burn out. (And "up", anything that is in contact with it.) And the cost of high wattage resisters is rather high, and they need a way to dissipate the heat that they generate. (A light bulb is a high wattage resister, and you know what sort of heat they put out.) So the 1 watt resisters that you buy at Radio Shack are not going to be able to carry the load that needs to be carried, even though the resistance is right to satisfy the calculations.


I'll quit, before I make it more confusing.

CZ

[IanDMacDonald]

Sounds good to me CZ (former EE student of Kettering). Yes, you are correct in the ratings of the resistors used. Problem is, when you have to start looking for placed that sell the high wattage resistors, by the time you found them, ordered them, etc., you could have bought your $9 electronic flasher from Auto Zone and been done with the whole ordeal.

[IanDMacDonald]

Thanks. I took the cover off the OEM flasher and am seeing some kind of resistor or maybe a capacitor even, IDK. There must be a simple way to modify it to blink with less load.

It is a green tubular type and says 150 (Ohm symbol) J, also 1W, and a 10 and looks like a lower case a.

Btw, the above is a ceramic resistor. If it was a cap, it would be rated in farads.

[CaptonZap]

Sounds good to me CZ (former EE student of Kettering). Yes, you are correct in the ratings of the resistors used. Problem is, when you have to start looking for placed that sell the high wattage resistors, by the time you found them, ordered them, etc., you could have bought your $9 electronic flasher from Auto Zone and been done with the whole ordeal.

Yep, I'm still not sure about what the benefit of LED's is, other than bulb life.
And I have yet to replace an incandescent OEM bulb, after years of riding an XS. So the cost difference can't be that big an issue.

But hey, what ever lights your bulb, so to speak.

CZ

[Yard Dogg]

Only reason I went with these lights is cause 2 of mine were broken when I bought the bike. I should have installed factories but I thought I'd be cool and install smaller ones for the looks alone. My fault I'm having to deal with this. But like was stated before, an electronic 2 prong flasher solved it except for auto cancelling. I never wait for that thing to work anyway, I always end up shutting them off myself.

[crazy steve]

I took the cover off the OEM flasher and am seeing some kind of resistor or maybe a capacitor even, IDK. There must be a simple way to modify it to blink with less load..

Look here: http://www.xs11.com/forum/showthread...ht=turn&page=3 (post 33) for an explanation of how the OEM 'flasher' works. It would be possible to modify one to operate with a different load, but figuring out the values of the needed capacitor/resistor is the trick. You're now dealing with reactance, not simple resistance, and the equipment needed to determine what you have and would need is well beyond the scope of most home hobbyists. You would have to 'tune' each flasher for the individual load.

This is the far easier mod: http://www.xs11.com/forum/showthread...highlight=turn This mod (with the 'right' flasher) can flash any load while retaining the auto-cancel feature.