Good set of 3-wire, LED flushmounts?

[Aracheon]

Now that the bike is down for the winter, I've started work on getting my plastics fixed and repaired. The previous owner of my bike was quite an idiot, and somehow managed to drill multiple holes around where the front turn signals go... in addition to dremelling out the main hole itself. The process of getting the holes filled in and sanded down is going quite well, but now I'm faced with a bit of a dilemma. The original holes where the Hotbodies LED flushmounts would have mounted no longer exist. In fact, the cowl fairing (once I'm done) will be completely flat where the turn signals once were.


Does anyone have a suggestion on a high quality set of LED flushmounts that are 3-wire and would work well being mounted flat against the outside of the fairing?

[Aracheon]

Just to give an idea as to what I'm doing / talking about, I'm about halfway done with getting the holes filled:

[Airreed]

If price doesn't matter check out Greggs LED flushmounts or Proton's. I have the Protons as they have the built in resistors.

[Ricky]

Funny, I bought a pair of turn signals for my bike, but after receiving them, I didn't realize at all, that they don't fit in the beveled portion of the fairing where the current blinkers sit.

So, I've got a set of smoked lens carbon fiber turn signals, w/amber bulb. They're definitely not high quality, but they are 3 wire, and will definitely mount flush on the fairing. Since they're just sitting around in the garage doing nothing (for about a month now) I'll get rid of em for $20. which is a little less than what I paid for em with shipping.

And since when did winter show up? I rode to work today, freaking gorgeous!

EDIT: On second thought, I wasn't paying attention about the LED part...

[Aracheon]

Funny, I bought a pair of turn signals for my bike, but after receiving them, I didn't realize at all, that they don't fit in the beveled portion of the fairing where the current blinkers sit.

So, I've got a set of smoked lens carbon fiber turn signals, w/amber bulb. They're definitely not high quality, but they are 3 wire, and will definitely mount flush on the fairing. Since they're just sitting around in the garage doing nothing (for about a month now) I'll get rid of em for $20. which is a little less than what I paid for em with shipping.

And since when did winter show up? I rode to work today, freaking gorgeous!

EDIT: On second thought, I wasn't paying attention about the LED part...

They're probably the same pair I ended up ripping off my bike. Nevertheless, they DO need to be LED. I'm looking into the Protons at the moment.

[Aracheon]

Well, since I figured out that LEDs really don't come in a 3-wire variation, I was faced with either fabbing up my own wiring/relays, buying magic blinker relays, or coming up with something else.

Fabbing my own relays: Didn't work nearly as well as I'd hoped. The relays were huge and clunky, and by the time it was all said and done, I had made quite a mess and ended up with something that didn't really work. $15 wasted there.

Using Magic Blinker relays: Well, they worked, but the problem was that you had to supply a constant, +12v switched power source, along with running another ground wire to the blinker. The wiring was ugly, cumbersome, and looked like shit. $30 wasted there.


Coming up with something else: Finally, I sat down to think about what I really wanted to accomplish: turning a 3-wire setup into a 2-wire. How does this work? The ground wire provided by Honda remains a constant. OK. The other two wires (through deduction via multimeter) was that one of them is a +12v constant only when the ignition is on, and the turn signal is OFF. The other wire is a turn signal that activates via relay only when the turn signal is ON, turning OFF the constant at the same time. OK. So what I really needed to do was to simply isolate the two (+) wires so that they independently powered the LED's (+) wire when needed. Twisting the two of them together would work, except that I'd get backfeed up the other wire which would stop the LED from flashing or even turning on altogether. Hmm... so the only way I could think to stop the backfeed would be with a diode on each of the (+) wires. So what I ended up doing was to solder and shrink-tube a diode inline with each (+) wire, and then twist the two together after the diodes, leaving the (-) untouched. The end result: success! My flushmounts work GREAT as running lights as well as blinkers, and I only spent $6 at RadioShack on shrink tubing and (4) 1N5402 diodes.


Here's a quick MSPaint diagram of what I did, and this should effectively work for any bike that uses 3-wire, dual-filament bulbs for turn signals. My bike uses orange and green wires, so that's why I colored them that way. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this is helpful to anyone looking to use LEDs with the same functionality as bulb-type blinkers.

[Aracheon]

EDIT: I indicated 5400s in the diagram. The 5400, 5402, and 5404 diodes will all work just fine. The number simply indicates the maximum about of input surge voltage that the diode will handle.

[Ricky]

Awesome! I just swapped the front signals on the cbr for a pair of flush mount LEDs and I was thinking of this thread once I pulled it all apart and saw the 3 wires and realized exactly why you wanted 3 wire LED flush mount signals. Yes, even after 5 months, lol. Now I know I could go back and convert what I've already done, into this. Right on Chris!

[Ricky]

I just finished up converting my flush mount LEDs to use this exact method, and they work flawlessly! Thanks for this writeup Chris!

[Aracheon]

Good deal, man!

Glad it worked!