Taurus SHO - Strobing - Switchback DRL's w/ Triton V6 Switchbacks

[LipschitzWrath]

The voltage regulator worked.

First order of business was to adjust it.  I hooked the input wires of the regulator to the battery terminals and started the engine.  I adjusted the pot until I got 12.6V.  The adjustment is quite good, I'll say.  I chose 12.5V as that is a pretty standard voltage you would see on a battery without the engine running.  Time to try.

I first placed the regulator on the battery wires feeding the DRL controller.  Much to my dismay, the flicker persisted.

I was feeling froggy, however, so I decided to place it inline with the turn signal trigger wire.  Success.  No flickering.

The downside to this is that it would require two regulators - one for each turn signal.  I concede this is not very elegant.  Twice as hard to hide and twice as expensive.

Not satisfied to leave it there, I decided to take some measurements.  I first measured the voltage on the turn signal wire when blinking.  I'm going with 14.3V.  I then placed my DMM in ammeter mode and measured the current on the turn signal wire feeding the controller.  I came up with 12mA. Using Ohm's Law, this means you could achieve the same voltage reduction to the controller using a simple 150Ω resistor!  Additionally, these values mean the resistor will only be dissipating a measly 22mW of power, so you can use pretty much any resistor, including small/discreet/inexpensive resistors.  And if you're using something like a 1/4 W resistor, I'm sure you could cover the resistor in heat shrink without any ill effects for a very sleek inline appearance.

I have a box of resistors laying around here somewhere but I'll be damned if I can find them.  Oh well, a nice 1,050 piece kit of resistors (38 different values) on Amazon is $10.50 with tax.  These are 1/4 watt and have a ±1% tolerance.  Added bonus, if my measurements are off, I have other resistor values to experiment with.  I have purchased it and will experiment again when it is delivered on Monday.  If it works, I think you will be hard pressed to finding a cheaper, easier solution.

[LipschitzWrath]

Apologies, brain fart. Been a while since engineering school.

I neglected to consider that the circuit already contains resistance so adding a resistor in series really makes this a voltage divider problem.  This requires you to know what the existing circuit resistance is.

I just measured it on my car and got 14.9kΩ. Solving the voltage divider equation for R1 and plugging in the appropriate values, I calculate that what I need is approximately a 2.2kΩ resistor.  Thankfully, it's one of the 38 values in the Amazon kit I bought.

You don't even need to bother with calculating the new current and power because both will go down from what was previously calculated when installing another resistor in series.

I will report back as soon as I have a chance to test the resistors.


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[LipschitzWrath]

Resistors did not work.  I tested several different values from the assortment and none of them had any effect.  This leads me to believe that the issue has less to do with the actual voltage itself and more to do with the voltage transient or noise.  This could probably be addressed through the use of capacitors and/or noise filters, but I'm not sure it's worth it to continue experimenting since the total effort will be about the same.

I have contacted Dan at DTBL.  He seems interested in seeing if he can integrate it into his design.

[SHOdded]

Good info thru your efforts!  Hopefully Dan can come up with a fix.

[6500rpm]

LipschitzWrath, here's the deal with mine. I was messing with my CAI today which is in the area I snipped the turn signal trigger wires so I hooked the left TS trigger wire back up. I'm not sure what you're running, but all my related bulbs are standard filament style with Daytime BL add on's. My OEM turn signal bulbs and dash indicator all flash at the correct normal rate and the DBL strobe in sequence with the turn signals at a rate of about 3 flashes for each one flash of the turn bulb.

I thought SHOdded had it nailed with the comment about using Forscan or IDS to turn off the hyperflash, but everything I can find or watch on Youtube seems to indicate it's for turning off the warning feature (fast flash on the IP) that lets you know you have a bulb out (or in our case the low LED draw making the BCM think a bulb is out), or slowing down the flash rate of the actual LED bulb with forscan. Well that all went to hell when I realized that ALL my OEM turn signal bulbs and dash indicator are flashing at the correct rate and it's ONLY the turn signal operation on the Daytime BL LED's are hyper flashing. The issue has to be either related to the DBL module, or possibly the resistance of the LED's used in their lamp asm causing the module to wig out.

Months ago when I had talked with Dan he had made a comment that it was only the Taurus modules failing. I have no way of knowing if that's true or not, but if it is, I'd be curious if we have a higher or lower number of LED's in our Taurus lamp unit.

I'm going to be ass deep in work for the next month, lots of recalls with several manufacturers to go with the normal work load, but if any of you want to contact me to work on getting this resolved if you have ideas or get any more information from Dan feel free to email me-killerbombo@aim.com and I'd be happy to try some things on my car. I'd also be interested in knowing how you wired the voltage regulator that fixed the issue, obviously in doing so, you've corrected a fault. If nothing else, adding the regulator in a discrete location wouldn't be a bad thing.

Good luck and thanks for the work put in,
Mark

[ZSHO]

Hmm,wonder if the switchbacks on PI models will apply to this!
There is much info on modifying guides especially on the PI! TOL. Z