I modded my side markers to LED's awhile back and figured I'd do the same for my front blinker. Since the front blinker became more directional, I modded my LED side marker to blink together with the front blinker. A big thanks to the HIDPlanet forums for all the great information on pulse width modulators (PWMs).







I converted the vid to an animated gif in the interest of size, but for some reason, the gif may animate slow on your browser.

 

looks REALLY nice, any pic of it furthur away?

 

very nice

 

looks great

 

PWM? Any more info on what they are and why they are needed?

 

Puff, the PWM is used to control the brightness by pulsing the output voltage to limit the current to the LEDs. I'm no expert on the subject and I fumbled along the way, so this link can probably explain it better than I can:
http://www.iguanalabs.com/pwm.htm

I used the PWM from the Quickar electronics website (Part# ML-804)
http://www.quickar.com/tkit.php?session=bZWBAIA9

This PWM comes with a variable resistor so I can adjust the brightness of the LEDs for the parking light function. When the blinker is activated, they go to max brightness.

You can also dim LEDs by using a simple resistor / diode setup. That's what alot of those truck modules use. I went with the PWM as it's supposed to make LEDs look more even and matched at reduced brightness levels, particularly for large arrays. Since my LEDs were spaced so closely together, any slight differences would be noticeable, so I used the PWM to make sure the output was smooth and uniform.

If you Google "LED Driver PWM" you'll find lots of info. The stickies in the LED forum at HIDPlanet have lots of great info as well, but I think you'll need to register to view it.

dream_G35 - I'll post some pics from further away when I get a chance

 

Are you going to be doing any services like this? Such as a swap or anything?

 

great job. how long did it take for fitment?

 

Gotcha. I figured the max voltage would be 14.4 when the blinker is on, so you'd just calculate your resistor(s) value for that. When not on, I just assumed the current being passed was around 9V or something. Just thinking along the lines of those plug and play LED 7440 bulbs, and if they change in brightness when used as the blinker.

 

What color LEDs did you use? From the gif, they don't look amber.

 

That looks really good!!!!!!

 

Thanks for the comments guys. No services planned unfortunately. It takes too long to make the PCB boards. I tried to look for an off-the-shelf led module that I could slightly mod, but all the 2.5” diameter modules I found only had a couple of leds at most and they were only designed to function as marker lamps and weren't bright enough to function as blinkers.

I ended up having to fabricate a board from scratch. I used Diptrace software to design the circuit layout (there's a free trial that allows up to 250 pins on the board, which is more than enough). The diameter of the blinker is 2.5” so design the circuit around that and fitment won’t be a problem. Also, the reflector for the blinker is removable, so once that is taken out, you'll have more than enough room for the board and power leads.

Once I traced out the LED circuit, I printed it out on a laser printer using photo paper using this procedure and ironed the toner onto the PCB board. I removed the paper backing with a warm water bath and then etched it in a ferric chloride bath.



Once the board was etched, I removed the toner using acetone or a similar solvent. Drill out the holes for the LEDs and resistors using a Dremel drill press (for 50 LEDs, that was ALOT of holes!) and cut out the PCB board to the proper 2.5” diameter. I used tin snips and a bench grinder to cut and fine-tune the circular board to size.



Then I painted the side of the board with the LEDs the same black paint that I used to black out the headlight housing. I had to do ALOT of soldering to assemble the components on the board.

For power to the board, I didn’t want to mess up the factory bulb connector, so I broke the filament bulb (carefully by wrapping in cloth and tapping with hammer) and soldered the leads for the filament to the power wires for the LED board. I coated the broken base of the bulb with liquid electrical tape in case there were any sharp edges. Mount the board using epoxy.





After that, it was more soldering to assemble the PWM board. I put the completed board in a RatShack project box that fit perfectly and mounted it to the bottom of the headlight housing using super strong velcro.

The LEDs I used are from http://www.besthongkong.com. They are ambers. The gif didn't capture the color very well. The amber is a much deeper and richer amber than the superflux LEDs in my side markers that I got from superbrightleds.com. The deeper colored amber gives it a much nicer and aggressive look.

I'm going to crack open the side markers and replace the superflux with the ambers from besthongkong, since they don't match very well at the moment.

I had also planned to replace the factory blinker relay with an LED flasher relay to eliminate the "hyperblinking" commonly caused by retrofitting LEDs, but it looks like our G's use some kind of proprietary blinker relay. I resorted to putting a load resistor in the line to simulate the presence of a filament bulb, so that the LED's would blink at normal speed.

Given the amount of time and work involved, this isn't a project I'd want to do again anytime soon!

 

wow thats cool. i wonder if littodevil's blinkers are as bright as urs.. wow... thats alot of leds!!! great job

Ed Lin

 

wow thats a grip of LEDs good job !!! Hey how hard is it to make a strip of LED's for a third brake light??

 

what did you put in your strip?????????????