Direction Indicator Audio Repeater Problem

It's a unit with a speaker type thing, not the realy, so have a look for that.

In article , BoB-B writes

Two thoughts:

1. is it indicative of the flasher unit itself going south? If so, replace.

1. If it's just a glorified buzzer tacked-onto the indicator circuit, why not fit an el-cheapo electro-mechanical one? Maplins (and everyone else of similar ilk) sell little almost cube-shaped ones for a few quid (say three sugar cubes together), that run off 12V. Being basically coils they're tolerant of odd voltages, and chuck out quite a lot of noise.

I've got one inside the instrument cluster of the BMW (R80 bike), to remind me to cancel the indicators, but it's loud enough to also remind adjacent car drivers and pedestrians that I'm there, at town junctions. That needed a couple of diodes adding, so that it works with both sides. I can't remember why it had to be done like that now, probably because it couldn't be wired-in upstream of the switch, but it works well and was a really cheap safety feature.

HTH,

S.

If you remove the instrument cluster you will note a small speaker on the pack of it which is plugged into the pcb at the bottom. This is just a small transistor radio speaker. Either the plug is loose, the speaker has crapped itself, or the instrument cluster amplifier that drives the speaker has died also.

Now you know where to find it - good luck.

Craig B. British Off Road.

BoB-B wrote:

Simon

If the gadget from Maplin that you mention is a small cream cube thing; it is a piezo buzzer and therefore not indifferent to the supply polarity.

IIRC you connect the i/p of a bridge rectifier to the supplies to each indicator and the piezo buzzer to the correct + and - o/p on the bridge. Operating the indicator supplies power to the buzzer while the 'off' bulb provides a path to earth. Doubt it would work with LED indicators!

Richard

In article , Richard Savage writes

Sort-of: yes, it's a rectangular cube, but not piezo**: it's a conventional electromagnetic buzzer inside. It came with red and black wires but I doubt the polarity matters much if at all (it'll be a soft iron core, I expect).

I can see that should work!

I honestly can't remember what I did, but I think it was only a couple of diodes back-to-back, simply to stop current going 'the wrong way'. I suppose I should have taken the opportunity to fit a hazard-flash switch too (later models have them). That series of bike has relays for the main lights and I can't remember* now if the indicator circuit is relay-operated or if the whole current goes through the handlebar switch (roughly 3.5A - not good practice, but something they could get away with). I'll have to go look in the Clymer/Haynes manuals.

It is a bit ironic that the Beemer electrics are a darn sight better behaved than the Landy's, even though the switches get pretty wet, whereas the Landy ones shouldn't get wet at all. .

Cheers,

S.

*medical problem: have just had something rather nasty diagnosed and fixed this week after suddenly reaching crisis level: feeling much better, but main symptom was severe anaemia, which has had some really weird effects on mental faculties, even though the rest of me is beginning to feel *much* better. I'm hoping it's only - ooh, look at the purple trees and the cufflinks... **I'm probably wrong but I thought you needed a driver circuit for the piezo plate-type, because of the ultra-high impedance (piezo microphones are rare these days, but their characteristic Z is up in the megohms range). Aren't the warbling things supposed to be driven at audio frequencies, with an AC feed, as opposed to pulsed DC, or is there another sort I'm not aware of?

Yes, you don't need a bridge rectifier, just 2 diodes, 1 in the feed from each indicator circuit with the cathodes commoned together feeding the buzzer.

Jeff

Defective memory here - apologies. This is the Maplin buzzer, I think, FL40T

Richard