Thread: LED Defender - Rear Lights, indicators & flasher unit

When upgrading to LED indicators on your Defender (or anything else really), it is common for the reduced load current on the flasher unit to trip a "bulb out" protection function. This function causes the indicators to flash at double time so that you know that you've blown a bulb. If you are replacing to all LEDs, this function is redundant.

Most people buy an electronic flasher at this point, or load the circuit up with dummy loads. In some instances, a dummy load makes sense; perhaps you aren't switching to LEDs for every indicator, in which case retaining the bulb out function is sensible. This does however mean that the indicator circuit is chewing the same amount of power as it was before.

It is possible to simply disable the bulb out function on a stock flasher though. Why pay for an electronic flasher when you can just fix the one you got?

To do so, you must first remove the flasher. On a 300tdi Defender (probably all of them), the flasher is located behind the gearstick with the fuses.

The flasher should be closest to the passenger side, on the back of the gold fuse box panel. Just reach over the panel and pull it up.



Once extracted, lever the cover off the flasher with a little flat blade screwdriver or army knife. On the back of the flasher is the circuit board. What you are looking for is a little IC called a U6043B; this is a fairly standard IC for flasher units across all makes. You can see a data sheet for this IC here. For those who aren't electronics savvy, you are looking for a little black rectangle with 8 metal legs - it's the only one on the board. It should say at the very least "6043" on it, but will probably have many other characters.



If you peeked at that data sheet (don't feel that you have to), you'll see that pin 7 is the bulb out function. Find it, and break it. If your flasher looks exactly like mine, it will be the pin second from the bottom on the left. If you aren't confident at this point, put the cover back on and order an electronic flasher!



I used the scissors from the aforementioned army knife to cut it. You want the break to be complete, so that no current can flow through that pin. Be very careful while making the cut, you don't want to damage anything else.

Reassemble the unit by pushing the cover back on and put it back it's place to test.

Nicely done Dervish. This is something that I've recently decided to investigate - what did the units cost and where'd you get them from?

Regards

Martin

Sick of the fishbowls? They're dim, tiny and if yours are like mine, full of water. Here's how I converted the rear lights of my Defender to LED.

First off, remove all of the existing lights. It's two screws a piece.



Once they're all out, push all of the wiring for each of the brake lights down through the grommet inside the back of the wagon and out of the hole that the indicator on each side once filled.

For this job, I used LED Autolamps P/Ns 80BARWM (LHS) and 80BARM (RHS). There are many tail light sets that could be used instead of these, but these suited my needs and were available locally and cheap! Mounting with these units was reasonably straightforward, using the existing hole for the old indicator, then lining the rest up straight and drilling.



(Ignore the overspray from a crossmember touch up)

I wired the lights in through waterproof Narva connectors so the whole lot could be pulled out easily if required. I won't go into the wiring as it's really just matching old with new.



Here's the result, because of the wheel carrier it was pointless having a reverse light on the RHS, meaning it ended up looking a lot like a NAS spec D110. The result is a much safer, much hardier set of lights. Like the side indicators (see thread), these are waterproof and virtually indestructible.



Note: Converting the rear indicators to LED will upset a standard flasher unit. Read my thread on fixing this problem here.

Or buy an SVX

Originally Posted by OLD

Nicely done Dervish. This is something that I've recently decided to investigate - what did the units cost and where'd you get them from?

Regards

Martin

I can't remember what I paid but I'm sure it was between $20 and $30 for the pair, which is a steal for the quality of them. I bought them at a local Autobarn.

Originally Posted by Drover

Or buy an SVX

I'm way too cheap for that!

Nice job

Great job Dervish and a special thanks for your notes on fixing the double blink rate without using ballast.

I thought it was worth mentioning for anyone who wants to have LEDs but retain more of a factory look/form factor that there is now a direct LED replacement for the indicators, parking lights and brake lights. Just google S6061LED, S6060LED or S6062LED there's more information here.