Flashing "Stop Lamp" indicator

I just installed an LED taillight on my bike and the "Stop Lamp" indicator flashes now. I found through a search that this is a normal result after installing LED's as the impedance is mismatched.

So, what I didn't find in the search was, is there a fix for this or do I just pull the bulb out of the indicator and not worry about it?

Sonny

The circuit reads resistance so now you've got a LED with very low resistance in the place of a incandesencent lamp with high resistance. I suppose a resistor inline will make the brake light indicator quit flashing but the new LED might be dimmer .

It's actually because the incandescent bulb that used to be there was a LOW resistance relatively speaking. An 18W stop bulb has a filament whose resistance is only about ten Ohms. That ten Ohm pull-down resistance is used to disable the flasher circuit that makes the dash light flash to tell you your brake light bulb is blown. If the filament blows, the flasher makes the light blink.

The led tail light has a very high off state resistance and the filament detector circuit reads that as a blown brake light bulb. The easy fix is to find the connector to the small flasher unit and unplug it.

Another way to fool the detector is to put in a resistor to ground parallel to the brake light but that wastes power.

bountyhunter wrote:

The easy fix is to find the connector to the small flasher unit and unplug it.

Another way to fool the detector is to put in a resistor to ground parallel to the brake light but that wastes power.

Since I usually do a "preflight" before I ride anyway, I'll just disable the indicator.

No biggie....

Thanks,
Sonny