TOPIC:

Hello, hoping somebody with way more electrical know-how than I have can help me with this issue I have after swapping to an LED Headlamp.
Bike is an 81 Kawasaki KZ750-H2. Swapped out the original sealed beam lamp for an Philips H6024LED sealed beam styled lamp.

Was a direct swap in but I've noticed some strange issues with the blinkers and headlamp since switching it.
When the bike has power on but isn't running the blinkers will stay on solid and not blink, but work fine when it is running, isn't a huge issue but strikes me as strange.
The main issue is that when driving the bike when accelerating and when running at about 30mph+ the headlamp indicator will come on and the bright will start to flicker on it's own.

I would imagine this is because the LED doesn't draw as much power as the original lamp but I'm not sure how/if I can rectify this.
I would like to find a solution though as the LED provides way better visibility at night.

Your blinker indicator bulb (if single indicator for L snd R) need two blocking diodes for the turn signal indicator.

 
 

You have a headlight module that kicks on the high beam if the low beam goes out or turns on the low beam if the high beam goes out. And because you are using an led the module thinks your low beam is out. Hence the flickering of the high.

I would be tempted to bupass the module. Unplug the module and jumper two wires on the other connector. I can see which two wires but I don't want to smoke your bike. 

Someone double check my work.

Disconnect the headlight module.
At the connector you can jumper blue wire with blue/orange wire. That should allow your dimmer switch to work properly. I'm not sure if that wire combo will match up your high beam switch with the actual high beam. It may be reversed meaning the low beam switch setting activates the high beam. If the switch doesn't match up with the light you could try jumpering instead the blue wire with the blue/yellow.

If this works, you need to splice the proper wires together and seal off the connector with tape.


 

Ah, that makes sense.

Any thoughts on adding a resistor onto the low beam power to resolve without bypassing the module?

My roommate thinks this should resolve it as well but I am pretty clueless about how electronics all work lol. (Also curious if this method would fix the change in blinker behavior too or if I will need to also add diodes either way as suggested above.)

Edit: Found this plug and play one actually: Link

In answer to the above question my opinion is "I doubt this will do what you want" as it is intended for much newer bikes and their integrated electronics. The add makes reference to "CAN Bus" ( controller area network) which is the data transfer system used by modern vehicles. Your bike is 40 years old and is not "computer controlled" your reserve lighting unit simply see's ground through the low beam bulb, when the bulb fails the control unit loses that ground and switches a reduced voltage onto the high beam filament. The integrated circuit in the LED headlamp plays havoc with the reserve lighting unit so the simple answer is to take it out of the circuit as already suggested. But hey, for less than $10 bucks what have you got to loose ?
PS: play safe and put a 10a fuse in your jumper cable

Your blinker circuit is another issue.
I'll look at it later tonight.
Look at your front led bulbs....do they have 3 contacts or two?
same for the rear---3 contacts or 2?




You shouldn't need the blocking diodes as you have two turn indicators, one for left and one for right. The diode is if you only have one indicactor for both left and right.

You may just need two resistors though.


 

F64 wrote:

Your blinker circuit is another issue.
I'll look at it later tonight.
Look at your front led bulbs....do they have 3 contacts or two?
same for the rear---3 contacts or 2?

You shouldn't need the blocking diodes as you have two turn indicators, one for left and one for right. The diode is if you only have one indicactor for both left and right.

You may just need two resistors though.
 

So I didn't do an LED swap on the blinkers, I just noticed the behavior changed when I installed the LED headlight. So it should have whatever came stock for the blinkers still.
I can see if I can take a look at the contacts thought.