KZ400 LED turn signal woes

I installed 4 LED blinkers in place of my stock ones... I also have an adjustable LED flasher.

The wiring is stock. Harness and all.

At first... all would blink at once, so I removed the flash indicator bulb on the dash, and it isolated left and right and worked just fine.

Then I installed a self-grounded incandescent tail light.

Now, the blinkers come on dim, and won't blink... they WILL blink, however, when you pull the brake lever and light up the "taillight" indicator bulb on the tachometer.

I tried removing the "taillight indicator" solenoid and no change. Still just dim light when the directionals are on either side.

Is the self grounding tail light to blame, or is this a load issue on the lights themselves?

Thanks!

DannyKZ wrote: Is the self grounding tail light to blame, or is this a load issue on the lights themselves?

The taillight appears to be an issue, as the system's behavior changed after you installed it. "Self-grounding" seems a bit specious: the KZ400 depends on proper grounding for things to work. Is there any way to attach a ground wire to the taillight?

I say *an* issue because I it seems odd that you would need to remove the bulb on the dash to "isolate" anything. What precisely do think happened by removing the bulb? You may have remedied the symptom (not sure how) but not the underlying problem; I would track that down. Off the top of my head it sounds like there might be a wiring issue with the LED flasher unit that made it distribute power to all four signals instead of just to the intended two.

I swapped the OEM turn signals on mine for K&S incandescent models. Connecting the wires in the OEM manner worked fine. I also swapped the OEM taillight for an LED version, using the same wiring scheme as the original and it too worked fine.

I did just try and isolate the light by running a ground wire to the light body directly to the harness, basically just left the light dangling next to the frame with no contact.

As for the turn signal indicator bulb causing the issue... the draw on the LED's is so low that they will actually self-ground through the filament in the incandescent bulb. By removing it from the loop, you prevent the current from passing through the filament to the other circuit.

I played with everything again last night, and still can't seem to figure out how to balance the current without using a load equalizer or ballast on each directional... which will suck.

I think I'm going to just buy a cheap set of incandescent turn signals and screw the whole LED idea.

DannyKZ wrote: I did just try and isolate the light by running a ground wire to the light body directly to the harness, basically just left the light dangling next to the frame with no contact.

What happened when you did that?

As for the turn signal indicator bulb causing the issue... the draw on the LED's is so low that they will actually self-ground through the filament in the incandescent bulb. By removing it from the loop, you prevent the current from passing through the filament to the other circuit.

Interesting. Thanks for the info!

I think I'm going to just buy a cheap set of incandescent turn signals and screw the whole LED idea.

I did just that in order to have brighter signals that weren't... fugly... and wouldn't have LED issues.

Mine are like these: www.amazon.com/Technologies-Universal-DO...gnals/dp/B000GTYOVG/
They're not quite "cheap" though: $31/set.

Nerdy wrote:

DannyKZ wrote: I did just try and isolate the light by running a ground wire to the light body directly to the harness, basically just left the light dangling next to the frame with no contact.

What happened when you did that?

As for the turn signal indicator bulb causing the issue... the draw on the LED's is so low that they will actually self-ground through the filament in the incandescent bulb. By removing it from the loop, you prevent the current from passing through the filament to the other circuit.

Interesting. Thanks for the info!

I think I'm going to just buy a cheap set of incandescent turn signals and screw the whole LED idea.

I did just that in order to have brighter signals that weren't... fugly... and wouldn't have LED issues.

Mine are like these: www.amazon.com/Technologies-Universal-DO...gnals/dp/B000GTYOVG/
They're not quite "cheap" though: $31/set.

I bought these: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E5VXI5E/ref...00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When I hard-wired the tail light and let it dangle next to the frame, it did nothing to change the issue. Still getting a steady, dim light with no blink. Left and Right are still isolated via removal of the incandescent indicator.

It's really weird, and I think it has to do with a shared-ground system, and something to do with super low resistance. Oh well, I'm not going to bother with it. I'll stick them up for sale somewhere and just use those new signals when they come in.

DannyKZ wrote: I bought these: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E5VXI5E/ref...00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When I hard-wired the tail light and let it dangle next to the frame, it did nothing to change the issue. Still getting a steady, dim light with no blink. Left and Right are still isolated via removal of the incandescent indicator.

It's really weird, and I think it has to do with a shared-ground system, and something to do with super low resistance. Oh well, I'm not going to bother with it. I'll stick them up for sale somewhere and just use those new signals when they come in.

That makes sense. I looked at those signals but didn't like the zinc philips head screw in the lens.

It will be interesting to see if you can get the taillight to behave properly once you replace the turn signals.

Nerdy wrote:

DannyKZ wrote: I bought these: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E5VXI5E/ref...00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When I hard-wired the tail light and let it dangle next to the frame, it did nothing to change the issue. Still getting a steady, dim light with no blink. Left and Right are still isolated via removal of the incandescent indicator.

It's really weird, and I think it has to do with a shared-ground system, and something to do with super low resistance. Oh well, I'm not going to bother with it. I'll stick them up for sale somewhere and just use those new signals when they come in.

That makes sense. I looked at those signals but didn't like the zinc philips head screw in the lens.

It will be interesting to see if you can get the taillight to behave properly once you replace the turn signals.

I like them because they match the tail light nicely. The tail light works just fine! No issues... but the shared ground between the tail light, the indicator solenoid for the "tail light out" light, and the directionals are what were causing wonky results...

By itself, the tail light works like a charm.