How A Turn Signal Flasher Blinker Works - Complete Redesign With Schematic [Tung-Sol P229D] 

Off topic: What is your favorite electronic replacement for a vibrator circuit? I love restoring old car units, but HATE those noisy vibrators.

Why not add a third function with an additional switch on the dash board somewhere for hazards?

@@Coveangel Not a bad idea. But did they even have hazard lights back then? Safety wasn't a very big concern. A friend had a 56 Chevy. Beautiful dash. But a very deadly dash made with hard steel pointy curves. Just a lap seat belt wouldn't save that head to dash part.

@@CrispyCircuits Jay Leno had a joke about the 55 Buick Roadmaster dash, after a wreck they just hose it off and sell the car...or words of that nature.

@@Coveangel That would make an even more satisfying click!

Sometimes you could "bend" the contacts and "arms" around a little bit to alter the rate of the flash, but there was no tweaking that could be done if you significantly altered the bulbs in the vehicle, and hence, the current draw that went through the flasher. That is also why one had to get a "heavy duty" flasher if you put a trailer on the vehicle and added more light bulbs. The trailer lights would change the load through the flasher and sometimes radically alter the flash rate beyond usable. Same thing when it comes to newer cars and replacing the incan bulbs with LED bulbs. Even though the newer cars have the "flasher" built into the BCM, it STILL senses current through the bulbs and changes the flash rate to unusable if a bulb is burned out or missing, and installing LED bulbs raises the same issue on these vehicles also. I have a 1985 Olds Cutlass drag car that I don't run an alternator on. The car still has functioning lights, so I changed all the bulbs to LEDs to draw much less out of the battery. BUT now the flash rate of the directionals was too far off to be usable. Companies make "load resistors" that you install in parallel with the LED bulbs to correct this problem, BUT, they are simply a large, low ohm resistor that hogs a bunch of current to fool the flasher into thinking that the incan bulbs are still installed in the car, and then you are back to drawing just as much current with the LED bulbs as you were BEFORE the switch to the LEDs. Totally defeated the purpose for me of lowering the current draw of the lights by 90% by using LEDs. With an alternator, the load resistors wouldn't have been a big deal. So, I came up with my own version of an electronic flasher module similar to the one in this video, except mine was 555 timer based that controlled a relay. Yep... I had to add a ground to my home brewed flasher unit because just like in the video, the old flasher was simply in parallel with the positive and the bulb, and wouldn't have worked without an added ground. I also replaced the dismal dim 4×6 sealed beam headlights with conversion housings that are still glass on the outside, and look exactly like a factory sealed beam, but the backside of the housing has an H4 socket on it so that you can install any type of bulb that you wish. I ended up putting LED bulbs in the headlights also. With the swap to all LEDs in my entire lighting system, I ended up dropping the current draw from over 20 amps for the 4×6 sealed-beam headlights, tail lights, all the side marker and bumper lights and the 2 license plate lights, down to only several amps. Here's a helpful hint for you.... If you're going to do this to your vehicle, DO USE the proper colored LED bulb if it is used behind a colored lens! Example: For a red tail light or a yellow side marker light USE a yellow LED for the yellow lens, and a red one for a red lens. I tried just using ALL white LEDs behind the colored lenses, and the white LEDs TOTALLY washed the color out, and made the red lenses look pink, and the yellow lenses were like a cream color. The white LEDs were just too bright and too white for the colored lenses, and washed them out BIG time. Once I switched them out for the proper color LED bulb behind the lenses, they REALLY popped and looked VERY nice. For a headlight LED color temperature, 5000k turned out to be my favorite color temp. Any higher and the headlights were too bluish for me to see well at night, and any lower and they resembled the piss poor sealed-beam bulbs that I replaced. 5000k was VERY neutral white, and lit the road up well for my eyes. Your eyes may vary from mine. I can now drive the car on the street, with NO alternator, off and on all day long with a single 200AH Lithium battery and not have rhe battery BMS go into low voltage protect. It will also last an entire weekend of drag racing without having to charge the battery, and it cranks over the 550" 13:1 compression big-block with authority all weekend. Other electrical draws on the car, besides the lights, are 2× 90watt radiator fans, 1 Meziere electric water pump, an MSD 6-AL2 Programmable ignition box with a Blaster 3 ignition coil, and a MagnaFuel Prostar 500 fuel pump. It's hard to believe that I can street drive the car around with all those electrical demands and have the battery last all day without going dead, but it does. The Lithium battery is amazing! It's 3 years old now, and still works as well as day 1. Wasn't cheap, but was worth it. 👍 This is just some helpful hints for anyone to consider that I had learned while converting my entire vehicle lighting system over to LEDs.

And still use a mechanical device. Lol

The same holds true for fluorescent lamp starters. The old mechanical version uses a bi-metallic strip to make and break contact. The new electronic ones have many components.

If someone were engineering this for production of a million copies, they'd work for a month to find a 3-component design that costs 42 cents (e.g. with a small micro-controller). Mr. C just needs one unit that's absolutely certain to work and can be built of junk box parts as he said. He also obviously loves analog circuits. For these specs, his 30-component design is optimal.

In this case, the complication is the low voltage and high ampere rate that makes for the need to upgrade or improve a little. But you are correct. And talking about voltage - at least in Europe, but I believe in the USA too, what makes analog landline phones somewhat electrically robust, is that they use a little high voltage around 48 volts. I have my self connected pairs of old cranking phones, several hundred meters apart, and connected them just via a single fence wire, and ground via a 30 cm (1 foot) nail in the ground - and it worked! Analog is robust - and it always works - everyone can understand how it works - no DRM, no intervention from grerdy corporations or anything. But actually - some times - the combination of old and new technology is a good way to go - and we see that often on Mr Carlson’s lab.

And one costs less than $30 and the other is probably above $100.

Thanks for sharing your story!

I love these types of stories.

Electric Guitar players will be very familiar with the words Tung-Sol as they are one of only several remaining extant Vacuum Tube suppliers for their amplifiers

I agree with you 100%. It would be so considerate of others.

I know and it's so simple to do, you hardly have to think or commit any effort...

"Good luck everyone else!" -Asian Lady

@@20alphabet she love you long time 🤣

@@MrPnew1 That would be Blink you long time.

You are very welcome Larry!

But we still love the vacuum tubes!

I'm surprised he didn't make a vacuum tube equivalent 😂. I'm kidding of course. However I have zero doubt he could have.

Thanks!

Yeah I wonder if this design could be tweaked to change the duty cycle if the load is different. I’ve seen both flash blink and slow blink when one lamp is out.

Tweaking the current sensor resistor values will create this affect, just lowering their resistance very easily detects a dead bulb. I don't want this though, as If I ever upgrade the lamps, I want the unit to still flash. I always check the lights manually, everyone else should as well.

@@MrCarlsonsLab there a good point, you could use led bulbs with this design and not worry about the flash duty cycle!

Same here, I think it's just a low power version!

In 1964, the Jaguar e-type was positive ground 12 volts. Using a "modern" accessory like a Motorola radio or 8-track player meant using a convertor to create a 12 volt negative ground power supply. I had a '64 e-type OTS with an 8 track! By the way, Lucas switches while reliable when new developed a different set of parameters as they aged, off, flicker, and burn. (:

I seem to remember that not many 6 Volt British Cars had flashing indicators (new fangled American show-offs), you were supposed to put your hand out of the window and signal like you learnt in the Driving Test. I had a Morris Minor and that had "Trafficators" that were little mechanical arms that popped out when you used the Turn Switch, they lit up but didn't flash, if you forgot to cancel them or they were sticky (a very common occurrence) you usually snapped them off when getting out of the car. Also, no one behind you ever saw them so you got a lots of 'beeps'.

@@gwesco Lucas, the prince of darkness...

​@@Flash-FX What would happen if Lucas made a vacuum cleaner? It would be their only product that didn't suck!

@@michaelhall4626 HaHa! I got that saying from a buddy that owned a XKE from the 60's (it was about 1975 at that time). He was having those mystery electrical issues! We needed Mr Carson back then!

Thanks!

As always. ;-) We all know how good Mr Carlsson's videos are.

@bsvenss2 of course, we do

As always.👍

My pleasure!

It sure does!

You are so welcome!

Um, I think that’s how he got to Earth. 😊

Your comment is here, the issue is on your end.

I'm much the same, but now-a- days maximum attention is good thing, as many drivers have their heads planted in their phones.