this is actually for a motorcycle.. it is blinking fast because the load from the front blinkers are missing.. i wont be adding any turn signal bulbs in the front so I was wondering if I can add load with resistors to the front blinkers so that my rear signals would blink at the normal rate.. i have a bunch of 12 watt, 1.5ohm resisters.. how do i go about doing this? thanks
It will be easy to figure out but first you need to know what the wattage or resistance of the turn signal bulb was. Even if you know the number on the bulb, we can trace that back to wattage. All you need to do is simulate the same resistance of the bulb. If you measure the resistance of the original bulb and add resistors together until you get close, it will do it. A flasher is like a multivibrator or oscillator, as resistance changes so will the speed. It's not actually the same, but the same effect. They also make dummy resistors for people who change to LED tail lights because they end up with the same problem. Pep Boys sell the LED lights, maybe they sell the dummy resistors too???
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HotRod
Another option would be to get a solid-state flasher unit from an auto parts store. Maybe ten bucks or so. Flash rate is controlled by a timer circuit rather than the thermo-electro-mechanical method in a standard flasher, so the flash rate is independant of the load. One bulb or six, same flash rate. Make sure that any unit you get doesn't have some sort of bulb-outage-sensing circuit, though, else you're out ten bucks AND you've got to wire in the resistors, anyway. If memory serves, your bike runs a standard 3-pin flasher unit (I think the pin configuration's called H4, but I'm a bit rusty so don't quote me on that). I'd take it off and go to AutoZone/Pep Boys/Whoever's down the street from you and make sure that the new one looks like it'll plug in, and I'd bet a dollar to a donut that it will.
The resistors-replacing-signal-bulbs method will definitely work, too, but to my thinking, the minimum number of components to get the job done reduces the number of potential circuit faults (and therefore potential troubleshooting headaches!) in the future...