Cheap/Free Mods

Would 1ohm work

 

There's one way to find out. It should though. The resistance will just affect your blink rate.

 

May sound stupid but how do you get a wire through the fire wall? the grommet by steering wheel area? I cant seem to get a wire to feed into the grommet the wires are in there to tight.

 

You can get away with resistors in parallel to your turn signals for TURN SIGNALS, but not for DRLs. DRLs are on all the time, and that generates a LOT of heat in the load resistors. Turn signals are only on for a short time, so they don't have time to build a lot of heat.

No.

 

Yup, that's the one. If you feel around under the bundle of wires, you'll find a tit sticking out of the grommet. If you cut off the end of that tit, it will open up a passage to get wires through. Poke a stiff wire, like a piece of coat hanger, through and tightly tape your wires to it. Then go around the other side and you can pull the wires through.

 

This is not true DTRL. It is actually lower light part of the blinker that stays on and then the higher part comes on when it need to blink. The resistors will work and not cause any hear because I have been personally running this for over a year.

 

I ended up getting load resistors that I spliced in and led Blinker bulbs. I can't do the DTRL because too much heat in the load resistors? Thanks for all the help

 

You can do the load resistors and be fine. Obviously with any mod monitor it to make sure you have no problems but you shouldn't.

 

gracias, just finished up putting dash back together

 

Here is a thought.....Since the DTRL filament and the turn signal filament are the same, you could wire up the load resistors in parallel so the signals work properly. To prevent the resistors from heating up when the DTRLs are on, you could take a 100-200 mF (microfarad) 35 volt capacitor and wire it up in series with the load resistor. You might have to play around with a few different values before you find the size that works the best.

Since the resistance in the capacitor increases over time as it charges up, it will essentially act as an open circuit (infinite resistance) once it has fully charged.

If the capacitor is sized correctly it will allow the blinkers to turn on and off normally and also block current to the load resistor when the DTRLs are on thereby preventing it from heating up (and wasting power) after the capacitor has charged up.

I have not tried this but the theory is sound.

 

It depends on the year.
Before 2011 or 2010, the sockets were only 2 wire (as described above) and the turn signal itself was used for the DRL.
Such would be the case if I were to install the DRL retrofit harness I have into my '08.
Instead, I'm going to go with Jumper's switchbacks, which use the harness but tap the DRL voltage off and route it into the 3rd pin on the socket.

The 3157NA lamps using the "hot" filament for both turn signal and DRL is the root of the turn signal lens melting issue.

You have an '06? How did you install the DRL? Using one of the tricks described in this thread, or the factory harness behind the fuse box?

 

A capacitor in series with a resistor across the lamp would simply serve as a buffer, slowing down the time to max brightness and time to "off"
Go large enough, and you simply end up with a turn signal that never goes fully "off" because the capacitor is discharging so slowly. It would just get dimmer and dimmer until it reached 50% where it would remain until the turn signal is shut off.
At night, when the DRL's are off, it would go the other way... it would gradually brighten to 50% and hold.

And you'd be talking like a 10 farad capacitor to do that.

 

I don't know what kind of electronic background you have, but this DOES work as I described. Perhaps you misunderstood exactly how this is wired up. The capacitor needs to be in SERIES with the resistor. These are then wired PARALLEL to the LED lamp.

I'm not sure where you are getting your 50% number from either. Yes there are two circuit paths very briefly while the capacitor is charging (for 1/4 of a second maybe), depending on how big the capacitor is. However, once the capacitor is charged, it acts like an open circuit so the only circuit path is through the LED. When power is removed, yes the capacitor will discharge through the LED again very briefly.

This is basic electronics 101. I just happened to be playing around with this and some other things last night as well.

 

Try it on the Tacoma.

It won't work as intended

I get the 50% from the turn signal duty cycle being 50%. That's where the circuit will stabilize if the capacitor is large enough.
If the capacitor is smaller, the flasher relay won't "see" the load resistor and you'll get a rapid flash.

 

I see your point. It works in theory and in practice as long as the load resistor has enough resistance to slow the charge rate of the capacitor and the time to charge the capacitor is longer than the duration that the turn signal lamp is on.. I think I saw somewhere that these load resistors are around 1 ohm? If this is the case then this would not be a practical solution because the capacitor would need to be ridiculously large.

On my test bench I was using resistors with much higher resistances (200+ ohms) I forgot that the bulbs on 12v systems have very little resistance.

It might be possible to design a slightly more complex circuit using an RC network to control the gate of a transistor which would remove the load resistor from the circuit after 2 seconds, but if someone is going to go that far they could just crack open the flasher relay and swap out the resistors that sense the lamp circuit resistance, or just get a different flasher relay.

 

Ya... a 25w lamp on 12v will be pulling around 2a, so the resistance of the lamp will be around 6 ohms, which is what the flasher module is going to be looking for.

1 ohm is way too low for a standard load resistor. The mod to the flasher relay is to run two 0.22ohm in parallel in place of the shunt. That is a much better option than load resistors.

 

so glad i came accoss this

 

Great thread!

 

Is there locker anytime mod writeup for 2012? I wanted to do it with DPDT relay, but wire colors are different on my 2012.

 

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacomas/304174-lets-see-your-frugal-diy-mods.html