Making Your Flasher Relay LED Compatible Options

[Spoke]

This thread is meant to help those implementing LED turnsignals on their 914.

Standard flasher relays were designed to flash 2 standard bulbs (21W each) for turnsignals or 4 standard bulbs with 4-ways on.

LED replacements burn between 2W and 5W and electrically may not behave at all like a standard bulb. The LED replacements can cause all kinds of weird things like hyperflash (2x normal flash rate), dash indicators do not work, or the the flasher relay does nothing at all.

The 914 flasher is different for early cars 70-73 than later 74+ mainly because of the tach indicators. Early cars have individual L and R indicators and the 74+ have a single L+R indicator. Both are handled differently by the flasher.

There are LED-compatible flashers generally available at your FLAPS which are plug-in but not totally function compatible with the 914 standard flasher. The functional issue revolves around the 4th terminal which the 914 uses to activate the dash indicators.

The aftermarket flasher relays are EP26 (4 terminal) and EP36 (3 terminal). I've seen these at Pep Boys, Autozone, and Advance Auto to name a few FLAPS, usually for less than $15.

I'll detail the differences between early and late cars, as well as EP26 and EP36 in the next few posts.

[VaccaRabite]

I wish I had seen this earlier. Now that I've been driving the car with the LEDs at all 4 corners, my dash indicator has just given me the finger and refuses to do its thing. I figured this was just something I'd have to live with (along with occasionally realizing that my turn signal had been on for the past mile or so)

I need to add this to the list of projects done on the car this winter.

Zach

[worn]

I wish I had seen this earlier. Now that I've been driving the car with the LEDs at all 4 corners, my dash indicator has just given me the finger and refuses to do its thing. I figured this was just something I'd have to live with (along with occasionally realizing that my turn signal had been on for the past mile or so)

I need to add this to the list of projects done on the car this winter.

Zach

Another thing I learned when making a triple gauge is that if you replace the brake warning light with a low wattage LED the relay gets confused and the brake warning light flickers with or without the brake or master cylinder signal. Never realized that the stock relay monitors current.

[worn]

Nominate as a classic. LEDs may not be a flash in the pan, and could be with us awhile.