Could do with some help here please chaps. I have one of those silly electrical problems that I am trying to get the better of!

I made my tourpak ‘quick release’ long before it became popular, by simply adding a 4-wire quick-release electrical connector into the floor, so I can undo the four bolts that hold it on the rack, twist the connector and go. Great! Has worked fine for years. The only light I used was one on the lid, which serves as an additional rear driving light, plus brake light, with one conventional twin filament bulb inside.

Then recently I tried to be clever and installed two additional chrome bullet lights, one under each corner, to serve as extra rear plus brake lights. You can see one in my sigpic. The wiring inside the tourpak is limited to a ground wire, plus one feeding the side elements and another the brake elements. Simples!

All I want is for the three side lights to work together and the three brake lights to come on together, which with conventional bulbs is fine, no problems. I could leave things like that and move on, which is the fall-back situation.

However the lights came with LED bulbs, which seemed a jolly good idea at the time, to minimise additional load on the electrics. Pushing forward the frontiers of human endeavour I have discovered that LEDs are sensitive to polarity and will only work when connected the correct way around.

The good news is that all three side lights come on together. And all three brake lights work together as well. But only after I reverse polarity of the power supply! All tests are done via the connector in the tourpak floor.

This is doing my head in. Any suggestions?!

 

Methinks you have answered your own question grbrown ... the LEDs are not bulbs as we know them but are " light emmiting diodes " and as being diodes they are definately polarity sensitive as the actual purpose of a diode is to provide current flow in one direction only . As we have pushed forward the frontiers etc., the venerable diode is now being used in many other ways and one is to provide illumination with very low current draw.

My suggestion to your problem is to use common automotive relays mounted in a prefabricated relay box inside your tour pack . This should allow you to use the quick release connector you have already built and not need any other connections to the pack. The correctly wired relays will provide the DC polarity to the LEDs.

Note : Relays are dirt cheap and Gods gift to situations such as yours but they can be confusing to wire if you havent been there before .?

Send me a mes. if you need help with the wiring.

 

Are you using a load equalizer? If not that may be your problem. If the drivers are running reverse I would have to think this is not good and may cause you bigger problems with the electrical on the bike I the future. You could mount the equalizer in the pack and some models will give you the ability to run brake, turn and signal from one lamp. Just a thought.
Cheers

 

I'm not sure I completely understand your issue here, Tups. I either haven't enough beer or have had too many. However, on first GUESS, I think you have the wires for ground and signal swapped at your "quick" connector. It would all work fine with incandescent bulbs, but, as you have found, won't work the same with LED's. Either that, or you have wired the LED bulbs in backwards.

 

load equalizer , LEdsa re fine for just running lights , once you start useing them for other use ie brake light , blinkers , get the equqlizer

 

Do you need a load equalizer if there are standard bulbs on that circuit? I didnt think so.

 

Graham, try to test the LED's one by one. I've seen chinese LED bulbs replacements with disarranged polarity. Maybe this is a problem. Normally side electrode on the lamp base must be ground and central one (or two if it is dual-filament) is +12V. So you need to check all three LED's if they have right polarity and try them in the tour-pak by one.

 

Thanks for your comments chaps. I have a load equaliser for my LED indicators and that is fine, but I am not sure what benefit that will serve the tourpak lights, or indeed how a relay will help them either. I have added relays for accessories like my air horn etc, so just telling you that to show off that I can do it!

Maxx, thanks for that tip, I have checked both LED bulbs and they are fine, both -ve ground/earth. It just means there is something else not quite right, but I have a few ideas of things I can check. I need to spend some time in a darkened room......

The nonsense is that while installed, to get the low elements of the LEDs to light they need to be connected one way around, but to light the bright elements the polarity has to be reversed.

The LED light units are earthed/grounded through the fixing and they have two wires to the bulb holder. I suspect I may have to try to dismantle one of the silly things! I may be some time.

 

Sorted! Swapped two wires from the qd connector around and the darned things work. Ya jus can't trust electrickery! Thanks for your help chaps, as I got the inspiration to poke around more. All back together now and ready to trial fit on the bike, when that is ready!

And this was just a little break from the major reconstruction work on Hyacinth.....

 

Voodoo witch doctors put those things together.

You might consider praying to the Loa next time.