LED trailer lights, and why I hate them

run a tube from a compressed air source , to a electric compressed air exaust valve , wire to a adjustable time delayed relay.... run 4 tubes out the eaxust valve to old windhsield washer nozzles aimed at the lamps....say every 15 minutes or so theyd blast the lamps with air.
or do away with the fancy valves and run a tube from the pressure relif valve/dryer to the rear of the trailer with a few nozzles

i wouldnt want to use electric heat , air is plentiful
 
This really doesn't have anything to do with trailers, but I just bought a whole bunch of LED bulbs from superbrightleds.com. My question is, will I have to mess with my flasher? I know on cars, they don't work good! But, I've talked to other truckers, and they said that it works just fine! The trailers I haul don't have LED's in them, so that should be OK. But, I'm wondering since they have no draw, will my turn signals work OK? I'm just replacing the bulbs-I'm not replacing the whole light assembly, with something from like Iowa 80. I don't know if those assemblies have some sort of voltage increase, that would make the flasher work better?

John
 
They should work fine. The circuitry is in the bulb itself.

But, the thing I'm worried about, is that I tried these kind of bulbs (from the same manufacturer) in a car, and I even bought the lowest amp flasher you can get, and they still wouldn't flash. When I called the company, they said that I need "load resistors", for EACH bulb, and would have to have them hardwired in. When I found out about that, I scrapped that project! But, if you have a car like a '68 Cougar, with sequential taillights, then the LED's work great, since the sequential unit IS the flasher!

But, do the trucks have different wiring, where I won't need the load resistors? I imagine that with a trailer, I would be OK, but I'm worried if I'm bobtail. I added up all the amperage on the bulbs I'm buying, and on one side, it's 480 milliamps. So, for both sides, it's not even 1 amp.

John
 

But, the thing I'm worried about, is that I tried these kind of bulbs (from the same manufacturer) in a car, and I even bought the lowest amp flasher you can get, and they still wouldn't flash. When I called the company, they said that I need "load resistors", for EACH bulb, and would have to have them hardwired in. When I found out about that, I scrapped that project! But, if you have a car like a '68 Cougar, with sequential taillights, then the LED's work great, since the sequential unit IS the flasher!

But, do the trucks have different wiring, where I won't need the load resistors? I imagine that with a trailer, I would be OK, but I'm worried if I'm bobtail.

John


I converted my truck and trailer to all LED's including the dash lights and everything works fine. Even if you had to put a load resistor in, you would only have to put it at one light position on the truck and just make sure it put enough load on the flasher to make it flash....But you won't have to do that because these days the more modern LED Brake, Turn, Tali lights have a load resistor in them from the factory.
 
Ok, never heard of that. I guess you can just try and see what happens. I'm looking at some LED bulbs right now. I can actually see the resistor inside. Not sure if this is a load resistor.
 
This really doesn't have anything to do with trailers, but I just bought a whole bunch of LED bulbs from superbrightleds.com. My question is, will I have to mess with my flasher? I know on cars, they don't work good! But, I've talked to other truckers, and they said that it works just fine! The trailers I haul don't have LED's in them, so that should be OK. But, I'm wondering since they have no draw, will my turn signals work OK? I'm just replacing the bulbs-I'm not replacing the whole light assembly, with something from like Iowa 80. I don't know if those assemblies have some sort of voltage increase, that would make the flasher work better?

John

I converted my truck and trailer to all LED's including the dash lights and everything works fine. Even if you had to put a load resistor in, you would only have to put it at one light position on the truck and just make sure it put enough load on the flasher to make it flash....But you won't have to do that because these days the more modern LED Brake, Turn, Tali lights have a load resistor in them from the factory.

LEDs draw 1/10th the current as regular bulbs.

The resistors are because each individual LED only needs 1.5 volts, but they need to operate on a 12 volt system. Rather than have a bunch of little 8 LED circuits wired in series, and then all those circuits wired parallel, it's easier just to put a 3 cent resistor in there to drop the voltage and wire all of the LEDs in parallel to common buses.

The resistors have nothing to do with the turn signal flashers.




If you have an electronic turn signal flasher, your turn signals will blink at the same rate regardless if you have LEDs or regular bulbs, add trailer lights to the circuit, or have one burnt out.

On older vehicles with electro-mechanical turn signal flashers, having a burnt out turn signal will make the other one not flash at all. If you convert to LEDs, they won't flash at all. If you add a trailer with regular bulbs, they'll blink faster.



The older style turn signal flashers are designed to have the amp load from two bulbs going through them. The front and rear bulbs (regular bulbs) typically draw 4.5 amps each.

The current goes through a bi-metallic strip that heats up. (a tiny strip made of two dissimilar metals with different expansion rates) As it heats up, one side expands faster than the other side, making it bend away from a contact in the middle. When that happens, it breaks the circuit, the strip cools down very rapidly, it straightens out, and the two contacts come back together, closing the circuit. The process is then repeated, over and over and over as "Blinker Boy" is going down the road for 10 miles.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no "blinker fluid" involved in the process.





If you screw with the amp load going through that bi-metallic strip, it will affect the flash rate. More amps will make it heat up & break the circuit quicker, but the "off" time will remain the same. If you have 3 bulbs on the circuit because you've added the amp load of incandescent trailer lights, you'll have 13.5 amps going through and they'll blink so fast the "on" time will be so short the bulbs won't even have time to reach full brightness. If a bulb is burnt out, there will only be 4.5 amps going through that strip and it won't heat up at all and the light will remain on steady. The same thing will happen if you have LED bulbs that don't use as much current.


Most cars & pickups these days use electronic turn signal flashers. The electronic ones do not use the bi-metallic strip & therefore the amp load doesn't affect the blink rate.
You can upgrade to an electronic flasher in 10 seconds, for about $20-30. It's as simple as replacing a fuse. Actually easier, because you don't need needle-nose pliers to pull the old one out like you do with a fuse.

I've upgraded my two old pickups to electronic flashers so trailer lights won't affect the blink rate.
 
LEDs draw 1/10th the current as regular bulbs.

The resistors are because each individual LED only needs 1.5 volts, but they need to operate on a 12 volt system. Rather than have a bunch of little 8 LED circuits wired in series, and then all those circuits wired parallel, it's easier just to put a 3 cent resistor in there to drop the voltage and wire all of the LEDs in parallel to common buses.

The resistors have nothing to do with the turn signal flashers.

Actually, they do. Here's the link for superbrightleds.com, that shows the load resistors. It specifically says for use with LED bulbs, to make flashers work.
Flashers & Load Resistors | Car Bulb Installation Supplies | LED Car Bulbs | Super Bright LEDs

But, underneath that, they NOW have the electronic flashers you talk about, and it does say that load resistors are no longer required. I'll have to look at my flasher, to make sure it's an electronic one.


If you have an electronic turn signal flasher, your turn signals will blink at the same rate regardless if you have LEDs or regular bulbs, add trailer lights to the circuit, or have one burnt out.

On older vehicles with electro-mechanical turn signal flashers, having a burnt out turn signal will make the other one not flash at all. If you convert to LEDs, they won't flash at all. If you add a trailer with regular bulbs, they'll blink faster.



The older style turn signal flashers are designed to have the amp load from two bulbs going through them. The front and rear bulbs (regular bulbs) typically draw 4.5 amps each.

The current goes through a bi-metallic strip that heats up. (a tiny strip made of two dissimilar metals with different expansion rates) As it heats up, one side expands faster than the other side, making it bend away from a contact in the middle. When that happens, it breaks the circuit, the strip cools down very rapidly, it straightens out, and the two contacts come back together, closing the circuit. The process is then repeated, over and over and over as "Blinker Boy" is going down the road for 10 miles.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no "blinker fluid" involved in the process.

DAMN!! Now, what am I going to do with the gallon I just bought?

If you screw with the amp load going through that bi-metallic strip, it will affect the flash rate. More amps will make it heat up & break the circuit quicker, but the "off" time will remain the same. If you have 3 bulbs on the circuit because you've added the amp load of incandescent trailer lights, you'll have 13.5 amps going through and they'll blink so fast the "on" time will be so short the bulbs won't even have time to reach full brightness. If a bulb is burnt out, there will only be 4.5 amps going through that strip and it won't heat up at all and the light will remain on steady. The same thing will happen if you have LED bulbs that don't use as much current.


Most cars & pickups these days use electronic turn signal flashers. The electronic ones do not use the bi-metallic strip & therefore the amp load doesn't affect the blink rate.
You can upgrade to an electronic flasher in 10 seconds, for about $20-30. It's as simple as replacing a fuse. Actually easier, because you don't need needle-nose pliers to pull the old one out like you do with a fuse.

I've upgraded my two old pickups to electronic flashers so trailer lights won't affect the blink rate.

Like I said, I'll have to see if my flasher is the electronic one. I wish I would have seen that, when I was ordering the bulbs. I thought I did put a different flasher in, when I tried it on my car, but I believe it went down to .02 amp, and I don't know if it was the electronic one. This was over a year ago, so I don't know if they were that popular then. I just hope I won't have any problems, after I switch everything over!

John
 
LEDs draw 1/10th the current as regular bulbs.

The resistors are because each individual LED only needs 1.5 volts, but they need to operate on a 12 volt system. Rather than have a bunch of little 8 LED circuits wired in series, and then all those circuits wired parallel, it's easier just to put a 3 cent resistor in there to drop the voltage and wire all of the LEDs in parallel to common buses.

The resistors have nothing to do with the turn signal flashers.
Actually, they do. Here's the link for superbrightleds.com, that shows the load resistors. It specifically says for use with LED bulbs, to make flashers work.
Flashers & Load Resistors | Car Bulb Installation Supplies | LED Car Bulbs | Super Bright LEDs
Read what RD said again.

The resistors RD was talking about are built into the light to make the light work. The resistor you linked to are an add-on outside the light to make the flasher work. Two separate things.
 
Actually if you look at both links and scroll down you will see they both are the same just different sites.

Some people have trouble and some don't. KW and IH seem to do ok with LED's but my Freightliner and Pete seem to have issues. A friend of mine just went and got a flasher for a car and everything was good.
 
I did look at my flasher, and it didn't say it was electronic. But, I had a 'spare' that I bought, in case that one took a dump, and it IS an electronic one! So, I just switched the two! I should be getting my bulbs tomorrow, and I'll try it out!

So, now that they have these electronic flashers, I just might be interested in putting the LED's in my cars! Like I originally said, I bought them to put in my '87 Olds Cutlass, and even though I bought a flasher that went down to .02 Ma, they still didn't work. I guess these electronic flashers came out soon afterward.

John
 
Just put 2 toggle switches in and turn them on and off when you want to turn and be done with it.
 
I did look at my flasher, and it didn't say it was electronic. But, I had a 'spare' that I bought, in case that one took a dump, and it IS an electronic one! So, I just switched the two! I should be getting my bulbs tomorrow, and I'll try it out!

So, now that they have these electronic flashers, I just might be interested in putting the LED's in my cars! Like I originally said, I bought them to put in my '87 Olds Cutlass, and even though I bought a flasher that went down to .02 Ma, they still didn't work. I guess these electronic flashers came out soon afterward.

John

My '88 F-150 and my '89 Ranger had the old thermal flashers in them. They'd blink faster when trailer lights were hooked up. I replaced them both with electronic flashers at the same time.

On big trucks, the turn signals are wired up completely different. The ones for the trailer I believe are controlled by a relay that doesn't care about the amp load. So upgrading a semi-trailer to LED's shouldn't cause any issues with the rate of flash. The ones on the tractor though, ... MIGHT be the same as cars, ... either a thermal or an electronic flasher. I really don't know. Probably not though, ... cuz I've noticed that they're in sync with the trailer lights.

Maybe somebody who knows will fill us in?
 
The ones on the tractor though, ... MIGHT be the same as cars, ... either a thermal or an electronic flasher. I really don't know. Probably not though, ... cuz I've noticed that they're in sync with the trailer lights.

Maybe somebody who knows will fill us in?

I dont know about all trucks but on my '07 Pete its electronic built into the Speedo~Tech gauge cluster.
 

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