Hitchcocks Forum

Hi all, I think I might have broke something that was fixed. I replaced the 4w very dim warning bulb on my C5 with a 6w one. It worked for a few mins then stopped. No fuse blown and now the old bulb won't work. Is the repeater circuit in with the relay and have I b***ered it up. Think I should have put an LED one in instead. My bad. Cheers. Andy

2W shouldn't have made a noticeable difference, that would equate to 1W per bulb. You don't mention how old the bike is because they've recently changed most of the bulbs and fittings over to capless, but if you have the spring loaded live wire fitting for the repeater bulb (like the pilot lights still use) it's possible the live is being held away from the contact point on the base of the bulb by a tight or misrouted wire.

Assuming your bike has standard wiring a normal LED won't work. You'd need a bipolar one or fit in a couple of diodes (that's what I did). No particular reason why the 6W one should have stopped working. Are you sure it wasn't a 6 VOLT one?

Hi, its not the indicator bulb I replaced it is the indicator warning lamp in the casquete. Cheers

It has now spontaneously decided to work again with an LED bulb in. much brighter and I can now hopefully remember to cancel my indicators more frequently.

A normal led will only work in one direction! You'll have keep going in circles.
The indicators earth through this lamp in either direction hencthe need for a bipolar led.

Hi thanks for the replies. All seems to be working for both sides. Not sure I understand the both direction thing. If the bulb is in series in a common earth, removing the bulb would stop the indicators working,would it not, and they work with no bulb or the LED.

Surely the warning light is wired in parallel....

USUALLY the indicator warning light is connected across the supplies to each of the indicator bulbs. The warning light is quite low power and allows only a small current flow. When one indicator is powered the current flows through the warning light into the other indicator. There is not enough current to illuminate it, but easily enough to illuminate the warning light.
It's different if you have two warning lights, for left and right. Then they are in parallel.

That's the spirit..



Keep on fixing it until it's broken...