Now that I've got front and rear LED's, I seem to keep finding excuses to turn my 4-way flashers on whenever I get the chance!
Luckily, we've had a few snow storms here lately so I've had plenty of time to leave them on
I'm addicted! So I'm trying to make a qucker flash pattern, another seperate circuit on a toggle switch and relay, that will flash quicker...
I'm starting to think it's not going to be possible without one of those commercial strobe light boxes the tow trucks have...
Today I held a second electric flasher, the blinker or 4-way type that plugs into the fuse box, inbetween the wires going into the rear LED brake light. Funny, the light actually slowed down and had afterglow similar to a standard bulb...I was thinking the flasher wold double the flash speed. Wrong!
It was 5 or 6 years ago, when I was 14, that I acquired my '65 F350 tow truck and I could have sworn that the flashers on the headache rack had 2 flashers hooked in parrallel. There was a toggle switch on the dash, running to 1 flasher, then to a second flasher, then out toward the lights. I am like 95% certain that's how it was hooked up, but could be wrong. I was young and had NO idea of how electrical parts worked. I know a lot more now, but still no expert. It didn't help that ALL the wires under the dash were Yellow!
I was really trying to avoid that controller box...I only want to have the toggle switches up front, and all my electrical crap behind/under my bench seat.

Anybody have experience with flashers, blinkers, or strobes?

 

*** This is opinion and could be wrong ***

I think if you want a normal flasher to flash faster you would want to find a way to add resistance (even just heavy resistors). The more resistance the faster it blinks. If i were doing it i would experiment with some high resistance resistors going from from after the flasher to ground (in parallel). If it didn't smoke the resistor then i would try different values to get the flash speed i wanted. I really wouldn't know where to start at...


I've thought about trying something similar but using a relay to alternate the left and right.


Who knows?

 

sure about that? i believe its the other way around. thats why when one bulb burns out your blinkers blink faster.... because theres less resistance since theres no load on that corner.

 

oh, and strobe kits are so cheap, why bother screwing with trying to make one?

 

Your both right, sort of. Depending on the flasher.

Old designed flashers worked on a bimetallic strip that when the load was on it would heat up and break connection turning the load off. Once cooled it would turn the load back on. That's the clicking you would here. So yes if you increased the load it should flash faster. Also on these if one bulb went out it would not flash at all but instead the remaining bulb would stay on.

Newer designs and electronic flashers slow down with more of a load. If a bulb goes out it would flash faster.

 

That's what i meant by "normal flasher". The ones with the bimetal strip. The more load, the faster it heats up and breaks contact.