Shift light?

[JET LEE]

I will check my voltage later tonight and post, I should have already done this when I had everything apart. I'm thinking it will be a very small voltage. These LEDS are pretty sensitive to voltage, I was just wondering if the others had voltage, if so then thier bought shift light has more resistance than my home brew one.

Right now, it's so dim that you can't even see it during the day unless looking at it perpendicular from the top of the LED and it has just a faint glow at night, not annoying at all. It does work great however when you hit the desired rpm.

Thanks

[Biggsy]

Use a relay on the output to switch the LED on.

Cheers,

[joecar]

JET, what LED and what resistor are you using...?

[JET LEE]

joe
I'm using a blue LED that is rated at 3.7 volts, .2 mA, with a luminous intensity of 2500 mcd. I soldered a 560 ohm resistor to the anode and applied my +12 volts there and ran an 18 guage wire from the cathode to pin47 on the red connector of my pcm, which had a wire running to it already for skip shift indicator control.

I was somewhat skeptical about my resistor size, but went with it because it was what an online calculator suggested from an LED manufactor. I did a calculation (deltaV=IR ) for my change in voltage and got a different size based on 13.7 volts and 0.4 mA, which is what I was seeing from my +12V powersupply.

But none of this should really matter if the wire coming from pin47 on the pcm is a true switched ground, which it could be on other cars, but I don't think it is on mine. I will verify tonight.

Thanks!

[joecar]

JET,

Don't you mean 20mA (I checked a few datasheets)...?

I calculate: R= (13.7V-3.7V)/0.020A = 500Ω

which is close to your resistor... so I would double this, try 1kΩ or something just below that.

Joe

[JET LEE]

Joe
You are right, 20 mA is correct...I used .2mA in my equation, that's why I got a different value, good catch..

Before the resistor, I'm getting a voltage of around .75-.84 volts, so I guess the wire from pin47 on my car isn't a true switched ground. I'll add another resistor, that should kill the dim glow.

Thanks

[highperf]

Just curious - was looking around the tuning categories for the '04 GTO I have, and noticed a category labelled "shift light" under engine parameters.

The GTO never had one enabled - though there is a spot for it.

Would setting the parameter to "enabled" really turn it on? I thought it had to be changed in the cluster software instead.

traumadog, the light in the dash is a cluster change, the pcm setting has no effect. If you want the light drop Chris note.

I know it's cool running off the PCM but has anyone tried a Raptor ShiftLight. Programmable and easy as snot to setup

Jim

[JET LEE]

Raptor shift lights are nice, but I wanted something even more compact to fit in my gauge pod above my boost gauge. My set up looks awesome. Plus, I've got about 3 dollars tied up in my shift light, which puts me ahead.

I figured that the money I've saved by using EFILive, it has already paid for itself!

[JuhaniLS1]

Connect some 5kohm resistor paralel with leds, they otherwise glow dimly as pin47 output has some megaohms resistance to ground. leds glow allready with very lowcurrent. Worked for me, and shift light works great

[JET LEE]

Thanks Juhanils1,
I ended up with 1K ohm resistor soldered to only the anode (in series) of the LED and applied my power source to that leg of the resistor. My ground wire went from the cathode of the LED to PIN47. The size of the resistor depends on the LED used. I used 18 guage wire.... Works awesome!