[T3] Lights

[Dave Hall]

Thanks, Jim. I wondered how the bulb failure system worked. Further research is indicated.
Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: "Jim Adney" <jadney at vwtype3.org>
Sent: ‎04/‎11/‎2017 15:15
To: "type3 at vwtype3.org" <type3 at vwtype3.org>
Subject: Re: [T3] Lights

On 4 Nov 2017 at 1:04, Dave Hall wrote:

> I see that there are special flasher units for LED turn signal lamps -
> presumably as the old relay no longer senses the larger load that was
> provided by the filament lamps. The alternative seems to be adding a ballast
> resistor to mimic the filaments.  Anyone confirm that? 

There are 2 aspects to this:

A resistor would give the load that an operating bulb would draw and make 
an old fashioned (the kind with a thermal heater) flasher run at the proper 
speed.

But our flashers, at least the 12 V ones, have another feature that senses 
that a bulb has burned out and flashes faster then. This is because a 
tungsten filament draws a LOT more current when it's first turned on and is 
cold. The initial currrent is 4x-8x as much as the normal operating current. 
Our flashers sense this overcurrent and use that to trigger the normal flash 
rate. A resistor won't do this.

-- 
*******************************
Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
*******************************

_______________________________________________
VWType3.Org mailing list - type3 at vwtype3.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options, visit:
http://lists.vwtype3.org/listinfo.cgi/type3-vwtype3.org
If you need more help, contact: gregm at vwtype3.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.vwtype3.org/pipermail/type3-vwtype3.org/attachments/20171104/0a575a12/attachment.html>