I fell victim to the fast blinker syndrome that many 2006+ Elise/Exiges seem to suffer from. LED's offer very high resistance (they are diodes) and so a "traditional" circuit will see this as a burned out bulb (since a burnt out filament also offers high resistance) and the traditional fail safe for that is to fast blink. So something causes the car to see the LED's for what they really are.
My car was well out of warranty, so getting a "free" fix wasn't an option. But at the same time I wanted to spend as little money as possible. Some have suggested using an LED aware relay, but I believe the relays are all in the Switch Pack Module (SPM) thats behind the dash. There are no user servicable parts in there. You can see pictures of it at the end of the post.
So I opted for the resistor method. This calls for putting a resistor between the RED and the BROWN wires on the harness for outer tail light assembly. While I found this worked, I noticed a strang behavior. Depending on whether the parking lights (and head lights as well) were on or off required a different value resistor to make the blinkers work right.
So my solution was to figure out which two resistances were needed. In my case ~22 ohms with the parking lights off and ~11 ohms with the lights on. I then wired a SPDT relay to the RED wire which feeds the parking light circuit.
The way it works is when the headlights are off the relay is connected to the 22 ohms resistor. But when the parking lights are turned on the RED wire gets 12V and energizes the relay causing the 11 ohm resistor to become active.
For all the parts required (outside of wire and soldering stuff which I have already) it was about $9 at a local electronics specialty store.
Heres a schematic of how its wired.
Video showing how it works.
I did try adding more resistance to power resistor thats included with the LED assembly, but it made no difference.
Heres a look at the circuit I made.
Heres the insides of the SPM
My car was well out of warranty, so getting a "free" fix wasn't an option. But at the same time I wanted to spend as little money as possible. Some have suggested using an LED aware relay, but I believe the relays are all in the Switch Pack Module (SPM) thats behind the dash. There are no user servicable parts in there. You can see pictures of it at the end of the post.
So I opted for the resistor method. This calls for putting a resistor between the RED and the BROWN wires on the harness for outer tail light assembly. While I found this worked, I noticed a strang behavior. Depending on whether the parking lights (and head lights as well) were on or off required a different value resistor to make the blinkers work right.
So my solution was to figure out which two resistances were needed. In my case ~22 ohms with the parking lights off and ~11 ohms with the lights on. I then wired a SPDT relay to the RED wire which feeds the parking light circuit.
The way it works is when the headlights are off the relay is connected to the 22 ohms resistor. But when the parking lights are turned on the RED wire gets 12V and energizes the relay causing the 11 ohm resistor to become active.
For all the parts required (outside of wire and soldering stuff which I have already) it was about $9 at a local electronics specialty store.
Heres a schematic of how its wired.
Video showing how it works.
I did try adding more resistance to power resistor thats included with the LED assembly, but it made no difference.
Heres a look at the circuit I made.
Heres the insides of the SPM