The led bulb is not turning on at all, and when I said steady I meant like the green arrow on the dash. It just shows the arrow constant and does not blink or flash. I'll go check about the relay clicking and I'm pretty sure the diodes are in correctly, put the band the same way you have listed in your diagram
LED Mod Thread
- Thread starter Blckshdw
- Start date
Relay clicks when you turn on the fogs and parking lights come on, but bulb does not light up. Turn signal is making no clicking sound, and right away the diode starts burning up. Just a few seconds of it being on and the diode is visibly turning black. Clicks off when you take out the keys and the parking lights go off
fr34kout said:
fr34kout said:
I don't think you wired things up properly. The relay clicks when you energize the coil (between 1 and 16) to make the normally open connections closed, and the normally closed connections open. This is supposed to happen with the turn signals, not the parking lights.
I can see your scenario happening if the diode between 16 and 13 is backwards, and allowing current from the parking light signal to feed down to the coil. Which of the 3 diodes are getting hot? Is it one of them, or all of them?
I tried switching the wires for 16 & 13, didn't see any difference. I also switched the direction of the diode between 13 & 16, same thing. Also the ONLY diode getting hot from what I can tell is the one between 13 & 16.
The only thing I can think is do I have the relay turned the wrong way? The way I have it right now is kind of like this, showing the distance between pins since 2 are off by themselves.
1--------------4-----6-----8
16-------------13---11-----9
1 & 4 grounded, 6 & 9 to one input of the bulb, 8 & 11 to the other input of the bulb, 13 has the blue wire, 16 has the brown wire, diode between them is facing towards 13.
The only thing I can think is do I have the relay turned the wrong way? The way I have it right now is kind of like this, showing the distance between pins since 2 are off by themselves.
1--------------4-----6-----8
16-------------13---11-----9
1 & 4 grounded, 6 & 9 to one input of the bulb, 8 & 11 to the other input of the bulb, 13 has the blue wire, 16 has the brown wire, diode between them is facing towards 13.
Hmm, time to break out your meter man, and take some measurements. That's the only way to figure out where your voltage/current is going and when. Did you try replacing that diode? Maybe it's bad...
Kinda scared to do that thinking the diode is going to pop lol. I'll go try mess with it a little more, expecting to blow some fuses yay
First things first, disconnect your polarity changer, and make sure your parking lights and turn signals function properly first. It won't work if those aren't working.
They're still working properly. I left the 2 grounds 1 & 4 connected, left the bulb connected to 6 & 9, and 8 & 11, and took out the parking signal wire all together. Turned on my hazards and touched the turn signal wire to pin 16, relay clicks on and off without turning on bulb. Same thing for pin 13. When I touched it to 11 & 8 one at a time, the relay buzzed to the turn signal going on and off. When I touched it to 6 & 9 one at a time one, the diode on pin 4 started to burn up. Don't know if that'll help any. But I found out for sure that the turn signal wire is the blue one
fr34kout said:
When pin 16 gets a signal, the coil should activate and you get the click, so that part is working. What should ALSO happen, is the signal passes through the diode to pin 13, which then gets tied to pins 9 (connected to the bulb) and 6 (which is open) that should cause your LED to flash yellow. The fact that you get no light to the bulb suggests the diode is backwards.
Touching power to pin 13 will connect the current to pins 11 (connected to the bulb) and 8 (which is open) causing the bulb to shine white. Why you're not getting any light this way, tells me the circuit is not getting completed somewhere (suspecting the ground connections at pin 4)
Applying voltage to pin 8 & 11 (while connected to each other) sends voltage back to pin 13. As previously stated, the relay coil between pins 1 & 16 only activates when it sees voltage. The diode has to be backwards, allowing voltage to flow from pin 13 to pin 16 when it should be the other way around.
Applying voltage to pin 6 & 9 will trace back through pin 4, and try to go to ground. If you apply enough current to a diode in the opposite direction to what it's supposed to allow, it will get hot on you as it continues to block it from getting by.
So my recommendation is to flip your diodes between pins 16 & 13, and from pin 4 to ground. That should take care of it, and get you where you need to be.
And now I'm more confused than ever. Now if you read my other thread you'll know I spliced in power wire from my fog ballasts to my corner lights, adding a diode so it can only go from the fog to the corner lights, and not the opposite way.
When I wired it again with turn signal to 16, parking to 13, etc I just turned on the blinker not the parking lights and my fogs were turning on and off with the turn signal. About ready to give up on this >.>
When I wired it again with turn signal to 16, parking to 13, etc I just turned on the blinker not the parking lights and my fogs were turning on and off with the turn signal. About ready to give up on this >.>
No it's on correctly lol because before I put the 2 diodes in, with the headlights on turning on a turn signal would turn on my fogs, after I put them in it fixed that.
I went and looked at the wires under the car, it looks like the corner light wires are pig tailed off the 194 bulb wires. I'm thinking the relay is sending out current correctly, however it's going to the fogs instead of te 194 bulb because there's less resistance? That could be why the diode is burning up, the fogs are pulling WAYYYY more current than the 194 bulb would be pulling.
I went and looked at the wires under the car, it looks like the corner light wires are pig tailed off the 194 bulb wires. I'm thinking the relay is sending out current correctly, however it's going to the fogs instead of te 194 bulb because there's less resistance? That could be why the diode is burning up, the fogs are pulling WAYYYY more current than the 194 bulb would be pulling.
Ok made a little shitty drawing to show what I did.
The red arrows represent diodes, the arrow points the direction of the band. The black wire on the top is for the ground, the black box looking thing on the top right is the bulb. Blue wire at 16 is the turn signal wire, brown wire at 13 is the parking light wire. Can see how I criss-crossed the pins to go to one input of the bulb. If that looks right but it's still not working, I give up >.>
The red arrows represent diodes, the arrow points the direction of the band. The black wire on the top is for the ground, the black box looking thing on the top right is the bulb. Blue wire at 16 is the turn signal wire, brown wire at 13 is the parking light wire. Can see how I criss-crossed the pins to go to one input of the bulb. If that looks right but it's still not working, I give up >.>
Took OUT the diode between 16 & 13, parking light works perfectly fine now. Lights up white with the running lights, however it turns off as the turn signal blinks so it's going white-off-white-off. Took that diode I removed and tried it both ways between those pins, no matter which way I do it it turns off the LED and starts to burn up the diode, the LED turns back on after I remove the diode and starts blinking again.
Edit: Swapped the input wires and switched the bulb and I got the bulb to blink orange but cannot get the white to stay on with the parking lights, it's like I can only make it one way or the other, not both. This was also without the diode, and when I tried to put the diode on either way, the led stopped working and my fogs started flashing.
Edit: Swapped the input wires and switched the bulb and I got the bulb to blink orange but cannot get the white to stay on with the parking lights, it's like I can only make it one way or the other, not both. This was also without the diode, and when I tried to put the diode on either way, the led stopped working and my fogs started flashing.
Putting any power to 13 is turning on the bulb (parking signal is keeping it constant, turn signal is making it blink), but while that's going applying any power to 16 is turning the relay OFF instead of switching polarity. So if I have the parking signal to 13, and put turn signal to 16, the bulb turns off when pin 16 is getting power. If I have turn signal to 13, and put parking signal to 16, the bulb completely stays off until I take power off pin 16.
Is this the wrong relay or something? Mini DPDT PC Relay from Radioshack. I can't think of anything else to try lol
Edit: This is what I bought
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062483
Edit 2: I also want to add that I tried to put a straight wire bypassing the diodes on both pin 1 and 4 one at a time, did not make a difference so I do not believe those diodes are in backwards
Is this the wrong relay or something? Mini DPDT PC Relay from Radioshack. I can't think of anything else to try lol
Edit: This is what I bought
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062483
Edit 2: I also want to add that I tried to put a straight wire bypassing the diodes on both pin 1 and 4 one at a time, did not make a difference so I do not believe those diodes are in backwards
fr34kout said:
Disconnect your mod that connects all of those lights to each other, then see what happens. Troubleshooting 101, remove as many factors from your equation as possible so you can pinpoint the problem easier.
fr34kout said:Ok made a little shitty drawing to show what I did.
The red arrows represent diodes, the arrow points the direction of the band. The black wire on the top is for the ground, the black box looking thing on the top right is the bulb. Blue wire at 16 is the turn signal wire, brown wire at 13 is the parking light wire. Can see how I criss-crossed the pins to go to one input of the bulb. If that looks right but it's still not working, I give up >.>
Your drawing is the correct setup
fr34kout said:
There's a problem here. If you have no diode between 16 & 13, it should still have the switchback function if the parking lights are already on when you activate the turn signal. The whole fog light thing is getting in the way. Definitely need to remove that from the situation to get a better idea of what's going on here.
fr34kout said:
The diode between 16 & 13 comes into play when the parking lights are off. The current from the turn signal gets passed to 13 through the diode at the same time through the coil making pins 4 & 13 be connected to 8 & 9 (instead of 6 & 11) This right here, is the switching of the polarity. Do you follow?
A little tipsy right now but I'll reread in the morning to see how well I follow then. I'm kind of hoping it is the corner light mod I did that's making all this act up so that way I can at least find the problem and correct it, then I can figure something else out for those corner lights at a different time lol. I'll try it out tomorrow or friday and post back. Just want to say thank you for taking the time to read through all my dumb posts and help me pinpoint the problem, I really appreciate it man.
fr34kout said:
I just sat down at work, so have one for me!No problem, just hoping you can get this figured out and working properly. A volt meter would be really handy to have **hint hint** for situations like this, if you don't own one already, and others in the future with your truck. You can get them pretty cheap, but they are an invaluable asset.
I have one, just the diode burning was making me weary of leaving the relay on for more than a couple seconds to see how it was working
Alright I disconnected the corner light mod I did, still having the same problem. Putting power to pin 13 is making the relay work, putting any power to pin 16 is turning the relay off and it clicks (so if turn signal power wire is applied to 16, the relay clicks on and off as the turn signal is on. If parking signal wire is applied, it clicks once when you make contact and again when you take power off the pin).
I can still get one light to work without the diode between 16 & 13 (either parking or turn, depending on what wire is attached to 13) but the diode between them either way completely shuts down the relay and feeds all power into the diode making it heat up. I'm thinking this is the wrong relay and there are different types.
I can still get one light to work without the diode between 16 & 13 (either parking or turn, depending on what wire is attached to 13) but the diode between them either way completely shuts down the relay and feeds all power into the diode making it heat up. I'm thinking this is the wrong relay and there are different types.
fr34kout said:
With this design, the relay is not supposed to activate when power is supplied to pin 13, the diode is supposed to prevent this. Does your other relay work properly? Or have you set that one up yet? Have you used a different diode in it's place? You need to change some things around and observe how the results change along with them.
The other relay got trashed, but when I was testing it I had the outputs and inputs switched, for some reason it still kind of worked though. Both relays were the same, however I haven't tried (yet) to switch out the diodes. I just have a feeling the relay is the wrong type or something, do you have a link to where you bought yours from? I just walked into radioshack and grabbed them, mini DPDT PC Relay is all it said on the package
fr34kout said:
If the numbers I have in my drawing are the same, and in the same positions as on yours, the type of relay you have is correct. Your problem is centering around the diode function between 13 and 16. I don't have a link to the exact ones I bought, I got them off Ebay forever ago, and the guy that had them, doesn't carry them anymore. I went for the cheapest I could find, if I was going to buy the mini ones again, I would have gone with these since you get 9 of them in the batch. The pin numbers are covered up with what appears to be some sort of shrink wrap though.
[EBAY]370292011358[/EBAY]
For something else I'm working on that uses the same sort of function, I went with a few of these. They are a bit larger, but can handle more current if necessary. Although they function the same, the pin numbers are all different for some reason
[EBAY]130661976044[/EBAY]
K I ordered 2 of those larger ones you posted, about to order some diodes but should I grab the 1 watt or 5 watt ones? I think the ones I bought from radio shack was 1 watt, was red with a black band. The 5 watt ones I'm seeing are black with a silver band (these are the ones I remember seeing in school)
SBUBandit said:
I measured the terminals, if you get some .11" female connectors, you can do more of a plug and play application, without needing those ridiculously huge sockets
I was inspired by our previous conversation about these to look into them a bit more.
fr34kout said:
The relays are NOT your problem, the diode is. The relay was doing exactly what it was supposed to when voltage was connected to certain pins. The diode was NOT doing it's job by allowing voltage to be tied to the 2 pins in only one direction. IIRC the switchback LED is only a 1 Watt bulb, allowing more power is not the way to go. That's the same thought process as putting in a larger size fuse, because the one currently in there keeps blowing.
Did you try a different/new diode like I suggested before?Nope, I'll go hit up radioshack and grab a couple to test out. Will report back in an hour or two lol
fr34kout said:
If you can get some sort of small power source for testing purposes, that would probably help you quite a bit. I use a space computer power supply, saves lots of trips back and forth to the truck.
burnedfingers said:
I don't remember the exact specs on them, but 3.2V sounds right, but the mA is higher than 19. You run 8 volts through an LED rated for 3, and it's going to have a very short life span.
Bought 4 new diodes, tried 2 of them with the same result on both of them. Relay still only works on one light depending the power to pin 13, the diode in the correct way is not changing the performance at all, but putting it in backwards is heating it up again. Kind of interesting because last time the diode was burning up regardless of if it was in the right way or not. So it probably was the diode, but still yet placing it in the correct way isn't fixing the problem. Going to try 2 more diodes on the ground pins to see if one of those could of been the problem.
fr34kout said:
But the relay doesn't click when you apply voltage to pin 13 right? Only when you apply it to pin 16 as designed?
At this point, your meter needs to get involved. Voltage should always get supplied to pin 13. Either by the parking light signal directly, or the turn signal through the diode from pin 16. So are you saying the light only comes on during the parking light scenario, and not the turn signal one?
Yup pretty much the light is on until the parking signal power is applied to pin 16, then it turns the light off instead of flashing it the opposite color.
Tried to DMM as much as I could, 13 is getting constant voltage, 16 is getting turn signal voltage, both grounds are seeing ground, and the criss cross sections of the relay one is seeing pulsed positive when the turn signal is on, the other is getting pulsed negative.
Tried to DMM as much as I could, 13 is getting constant voltage, 16 is getting turn signal voltage, both grounds are seeing ground, and the criss cross sections of the relay one is seeing pulsed positive when the turn signal is on, the other is getting pulsed negative.
fr34kout said:
Parking light signal goes to pin 13, not 16. 16 sees turn signal only.
fr34kout said:
Not sure what you hooked up here to get constant voltage to pin 13, but that should be the parking light signal only. I think if you get this part cleared up, you'll be good to go.
Sorry I worded that wrong lol, turn signal wire is indeed to pin 16, and parking signal wire is to 13. So 13 is seeing constant voltage when the parking lights are on, and 16 is seeing pulsed voltage when the turn signal is on
fr34kout said:
Everything sounds like it's hooked up the way it's supposed to be. Can you post a pic of your setup? Maybe there's something we missed.
K I DMMed everything, here's what each pin is seeing at each stage.
Car off, every single pin is seeing ground.
Car on, parking lights on. Pins 1 4 6 9 and 16 are seeing constant ground, pins 8 11 and 13 are seeing constant power.
Car on, turn signal on. Pins 1 and 4 are seeing constant ground, pins 6 and 9 are seeing pulsed ground, pins 8 and 11 are seeing pulsed power. Pin 16 is seeing both pulsed ground and power (switches from one to the other) but pin 13 is only seeing constant power. Isn't this supposed to be pulsing to ground as pin 16 goes to power? Is that the problem right there?
Car off, every single pin is seeing ground.
Car on, parking lights on. Pins 1 4 6 9 and 16 are seeing constant ground, pins 8 11 and 13 are seeing constant power.
Car on, turn signal on. Pins 1 and 4 are seeing constant ground, pins 6 and 9 are seeing pulsed ground, pins 8 and 11 are seeing pulsed power. Pin 16 is seeing both pulsed ground and power (switches from one to the other) but pin 13 is only seeing constant power. Isn't this supposed to be pulsing to ground as pin 16 goes to power? Is that the problem right there?
fr34kout said:
If your parking lights are on, then pin 13 will always be hot, which is perfectly fine. The turn signal pulsing pin 16 activates the relay, which switches the polarity around for the bulb. When the parking lights are off, power supplied through pin 16 still goes through pin 13 via diode when the polarity is switched to "turn signal" mode. Did you test it with your parking lights off and turn signal on?
burnedfingers said:
Since our alternators put out 14.4V, a lot of us tend to use that value in our calculations (or online resistor calculators like I used for mine). Not that it makes too much of a difference.
Turn signal without the parking lights is causing the diode to burn up and the led is flashing on for only a split second at partial power. So ready to just give up on this lol
fr34kout said:
This goes back to the problem being with that diode not functioning properly. You got a Radio Shack part number for it?burnedfingers said:
I searched through Ebay to find them, they are rated for 20mA. They've been fine for the past year, as have all the other modules I've put them in. The ones in my cluster, and dome lights, are rated for 30mA. Thanks though, anyone who has my LED's best interest at heart, is OK in my book.
fr34kout said:
Yeah, those are the same one's I'm using. :banghead: I'm officially out of ideas on why your diodes are burning up on you (and not working) from that position.
Yup I'm stumped too. I ordered those larger relays you mentioned, and a 50 pack of the diodes from ebay. Coming from China so won't be here for a while, but when they do I'll try it one more time and if I still can't get it to work then I give up lmao