12v led turn signals on a 6v bike

[The Lloyd]

Most of this question is driven solely by money.

6v turn signals for my bike are expensive, relatively, $60 a corner. 12v are free, I already have two sets of stock ‘looking’ 12v LED’s.

not wanting to switch the entire bike over to 12v, tried that once and I find it hard to get all that smoke back into the wires once you let it escape.

i have a pair 6v to 12v converters already and 12v LED flasher units. So zero $ spent so far. If I had not had all the 12v parts I would not ask this question but I am being cheap, at least while my wife is watching.

From what I understand on the bike there is a black and grey wire going to the stock flasher unit, black (6v power) in and grey out to the switch.

the 6v to 12v converter is power and ground in, power and ground out. So my basic wiring mentality would bring the 6v black (power) wire into the converter and the 12v power wire out into the 12v flasher relay, grounding both ground wires on the converter. The 12v grey wire from the relay then goes to the switch, then to the 12v turn signals. The turn signal light on the gauge cluster would also need to be changed to 12v. Which I also have on hand.

is it that simple or am I missing something?

 

[stl360+450]

The only thing that stands out to me is that you give me the impression that you view the ground on the converter as separate from the ground on the rest of the circuit. I think it should share the common ground for the full circuit.

Shouldn't you only need one converter and one flasher relay?

 

[NeverEverJamToday]

Have you tried just running the LEDs on 6v to see what happens? Might turn out to illuminate sufficiently without the converter. Is your flasher electronic based, bi metal or solenoid?
Also a link to $60 6v LEDs is requested. That's absurd

 

[kbongos]

If I had a 6V bike I would be tempted to convert it to 12v. I hear it can work and not be that difficult. I did get some experience trying to help my with my buddy's 6V bike. Here is a link to my ramblings: https://www.vintagehondatwins.com/f...d-indicator-lights-on-cm400t.6123/#post-73343
So the 12V el-cheapo flasher just worked on the 6V. You mention flasher 'relay', I'm guessing it's not really a relay, but a more modern digital flasher you are dealing with. Hopefully it is not a 'relay' or current driven 'bi-metal' one(the old kind that require lot's of current to heat up to bend it on and off). My opinion is, the less current needed, the better. But there are older bombers that I'm told would over-voltage the battery if the current was not right. My buddy's bike had the wimpiest little battery ever, but for the most part did not use it, with kick start, separate coil generators for headlamp and AC-CDI.
So definitely you need to study your schematic of bike. What went wrong with 12V conversion? Was it on this bike? What is the year and model of your bike here?
6V sucks, 12V rocks. I have picked up and tried some inexpensive boost converters, cost a buck or two, have a pot to adjust to desired output. Have tried them with 5V battery pack to convert to 12V LED, they work good and I believe are fairly efficient, probably 90% or so. You should experiment on the bench to see what works. Those 6V LED turn lights I picked up for buddy's bike did not work good at all, very dim. In general, I think going LED over the old filament is a big win as they consume 1/10 the current and are more readily available. It can get weird as they have a needed polarity, the 2 LED ones are not separate filaments. So you may have to adjust circuit, like adding diodes is a common fix for such ailments.

 

[Spokes]

I just combined LED's and soldered dual filament regular bulbs on my 6V CA95. Simple 6V flasher, moped handlebar switch, cheap bullet lights using 7/8" Ricky B clamps on the handlebars to hold front turn signals. Plenty bright.

 

[kbongos]

Nice looking Benley bike @Spokes ! Good job with little video lookover. Love the look of those old bikes, totally George Jenson looking.