Flashing your Side Marker Lamps - Background and Procedure for 328 (and others)

U.S. Spec Ferraris (going at least as far back as the GT4) have "side marker" lights, the little rectangular lights that look like reflectors on either side of the car, both towards the front and the rear. It is clear the main motivation for these is safety, such that people with a profile view of the car can see it even at night (if you have your parking lights or headlights on). Some have reflective qualities such that they will reflect back light even if the lights aren't on (try taking a picture of your car with the flash, you'll see "hot spots" from these side markers). On Ferrari 308s and 328s (the cars I have direct experience with), these lights are wired into the parking light circuit.

You may have seen cars that do a sensible thing: they FLASH the front side markers along with the turn signals. My old 1987 SAAB 9000T did this, as do many other cars. The thinking goes that safety is increased through awareness, in that drivers seeing your car from the side will know of your intention to turn into them. My understanding is that side marker flashing is also used extensively in Europe.

Regarding legality, U.S. laws currently do not require that side marker lamps flash; nor do U.S. laws prohibit them from doing so.

I have done a small change to the 328's wiring to enable this effect, and wanted to share with the group.

I'm doing a number of lighting-related changes to the car--headlight upgrades and brighter signal bulb upgrades. All of this has been motivated by Daniel Stern, of Daniel Stern Lighting (http://www.danielsternlighting.com/) [NO AFFILIATION, although I am a customer]. Mr. Stern is clearly an expert in automotive lighting, with a scientific, clear-headed approach which cuts through all of the hype and silly products that are available in this domain. He has been very helpful for me in guiding my selection of headlights for the 328 as well as some other things.

Notably, Mr. Stern describes a simple upgrade to obtain flashing of the side marker lamps here:

Flashing Sidemarker Lamps
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/markerflash/markerflash.html

(PDF VERSION):
http://dsl.torque.net/images/Markerflash.pdf


I was able to corroborate his diagram of common wiring for non-flashing side markers with that appearing in the 328 wiring manual (wiring on 308 should be effectively identical for these purposes). I then performed the upgrade in about two hours, and am very pleased with the result.

For reference, I have attached to short movie clips taken with my digital camera showing the flashing side marker effect. The first movie is with the parking lights and/or headlights off; the side markers are shown flashing in sync with the signals. The second movie is with the parking lights on (the same result would occur if the headlights were on, since this implies the parking/running lights would also be on). In this second movie, the side markers flash out of sequence with the signals; that is, when the signals are on, the side marker lights are off, and vice-versa. This is the behavior of many flashing-sidemarker lighting systems due to the simplicity of the wiring.

The net result is a good one. It's not "cool"; it's just a nice safety upgrade. It is also completely reversible (would take me 15 minutes to reverse completely).

General Procedure:

1. Remove headlights. (You will be accessing the turn signal wiring through this "access" area where the headlights used to be.) N.B. Headlight removal is simple and described in your owners manual. Be sure not to mistake the headlight alignment screws for the headlamp removal screws!

2. Remove forward inner fender linings from the two front wheel wells. On the 328, this is a total of eight phillips head screws and washers.

3. Locate the plastic-shielded tube containing the side marker lamp wiring.

4. Open up this tubing to expose two wires: A colored wire and a black wire. The black wire is the ground.

5. For each side marker lamp, cut the black wire--the ground, and tie it off thoroughly (electrical tape).

6. Identify the turn signal wiring. On the 328, these are blue wires. These are not shown in the wiring diagram going to the actual bulb; i.e. the harness-to-turn-signal-lamp wiring is fixed (blue in my case). The wiring diagram shows a light blue ("A" Italian color code) and a light blue striped black ("AN" color code) leading up to the actual harness fastener, after which it just turns to blue. This is the wire you want.

7. Carefully splice into the two turn signal wires. A good method is to expose the wiring, wind a wire around, solder, and use heat shrink tubing. Another method is to use "Steps" or metal "Spade splitters" (available at Radio Shack), whereby you cut the blue wire, crimp a metal spade fastener on to each end (one male, one female for reversibility). The "step" connector then has a third lead for a new wire. Again, electrical tape and/or heat shrink tubing. Do not allow these leads to touch ground.

8. From the splice/step connector, run a new wire (one for each side) back to the area where you cut the side marker ground wire. Avoid excess wire here. Leave some slack to be taken up with wire ties (I used two wire ties for each side).

9. Connect this new wire--already connected at one end to the turn signal lead--to what was formally the ground wire leading to the side marker lamp. Note: DO NOT connect this wire to (cut) ground wire NO LONGER CONNECTED to the side marker lamp--this wire is an actual live ground (and should be thoroughly taped off).

10. Voila--you're finished. Clean up, tie off wires, use electrical tape judiciously, put the wheel well liners back, and you're all set.

11. Enjoy safe, new flashing side marker lamps.


Post back here if you have any questions.

I suspect this modification can be done similarly to 348s and more modern Ferraris; then again, it wouldn't surprise me to see this behavior already present in the modern cars. Can anyone confirm whether or not the side markers flash in their own cars? (348, 355, 360, 550, etc.)

P.S. It may not be immediately clear from Mr. Stern's website why this works--here is a link with some additional detail. This is a very common modification so it has been applied to many cars and described/explained many times.

Flashing Side Marker Lights By Martin Gutkowski
http://www.dmcnews.com/Techsection/markerflash.html


WHY IT WORKS

A bulb is a resistive device and as such will work plugged in either way around.

1: When the indicator is OFF, the Positive feed to the indicator bulb is grounded.

2: When the side marker light is OFF, the Positive feed to the marker bulb is grounded.

3: When the side marker is OFF, and the Indicator is ON, the maker will light up because its ground wire gets pulled to 12v through the indicator, and its Positive feed is grounded

4: When the side marker is ON, its ground wire is grounded through the positive feed to the indicator

5: When the side marker is ON, and the indicator is ON, both the supply side and the ground side of the marker light's bulb is 12v, so it turns off.




UPDATE: Even though I tried to keep the videos short, they're still too big to be uploaded here (only allows 1/2 MB per AVI file). So I'll host them on my own website for now (MODS: Can you temporarily increase size allowances for AVIs?)...

Video 1: Side Marker Flashing, Parking Lights Off:
http://www.mikeandsharon.com/markerflash/MVI_6458.AVI

Video 2: Side Marker Flashing, Parking Lights On
http://www.mikeandsharon.com/markerflash/MVI_6459.AVI



Hope some of you "tinkerers" will find this useful,

--Mike

 

If the parking lights are on, then the side marker lights are by default "on" (just like stock). The left or right front one will "blink" or turn off when the left/right signal is used respectively, while the other side markers will remain constantly on (just like the parking lights). Think of the signal as "interrupting" the corresponding front side marker's light.

When the parking lights are off, then the side markers are off, execpt when the left/right signal is "on", in which case the side marker will flash whenever the turn signal is flashing.

So I think that's what you were asking... When the parking lights are on, the side marker lamps are on, too. Either the left or the right front side marker will turn off momentarily whenever the bulb in the turn signal lamp is on.


Everything is as you would expect.

No problems with hazard lights, either.

 

One side note.

If you don't want to remove your headlights to get to the turn signal wires, you can keep the headlights in and just remove the foglight assembly (talking about 328s here). The latter is quite easy (just a few minutes each). The foglight assemblies pull right out, giving you access to the turn signal wire to tap into.

--Mike

 

FYI, videos were down for a while but are back up now. Even did a little writeup.

http://www.mikeandsharon.com/markerflash/

I continue to be very pleased with this modification.


--Mike