supplementary lights

[euphonius]

Dear Maux,

The lights look great in the mancave. Looking forward to see what kind of beam they throw. Wish I had an idea of how best to wire them. I'm guessing you'll need a relay or two, and will want to switch them from somewhere on your handlebars.

Keep it coming!

[Maux]

I'm going to connect it to a switch which I believe was used for the rear strobe light before it was removed. I've tried to ask about how to wire it (I know it's probably somewhere in the headlight nest) and I think I've got some help arranged, which is a good thing, because I'm no wiz with electrical systems. In this picture this switch is circled in yellow. I'd be quite happy to get this done this week, but we'll see.
CIMG1601small.jpg

[euphonius]

Dear Maux,

That's one amazing switch -- definitely customized for police use, and very useful if you want different systems switched separately! What's the big slider switch circled in blue? Maybe the siren? Or those spinning blades that come out from the hubs for shredding criminals' tires?

Keep us posted!

[Maux]

Yes? Hymmm, slider switch in blue and the rocker switch bellow it were for the front lights/sirens, I think. There is also an audio jack for a microphone to the left of the slider and it's fun to imagine getting a loudspeaker set up so I could yell at taxis, or offend people for miles around with campsite karaoke.

Yeah the right side cluster is neat but god help me if I need to find a spare for some reason!

No date set for getting together with some Chinese friends and taking a crack at wiring these up.

[felix]

Hi Maux thanks for sharing! I was almost going to pull the plug on these a couple of days ago, but now that you have yours i'm going to wait until you have them wired up to hear what you think of them first. (if you don't mind)

For the switches, i'm pretty set on simply wiring them up to light with my high beam (via relay). This is because i want to be able to signal people with them using the passing light trigger on the left hand.

When you take photos to compare before and after, use manual settings to make sure both pics are the same shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings. That way you'll have a true comparison.

Thanks for being the guinea pig!

[Barry]

Any update, or pics of the lights installed and working? I'm also interested in how these perform!

[Maux]

Ohhh Ahh sorry guys, nothing yet. I've got a multimeter and I've thought about just pulling the thing apart where it is and seeing if I can track down the switches wire but you could just show me a picture of a bunch of wires and it would piss me off, much less having to fiddle around with them. I'm also not quite sure about how to get into the headlight area because its covered by this bullet faring.

The lights are right here by my desk, asking me to put them on whenever I look at them.

Felix, thanks for the tip about exposure and ISO, I'll also try and get pictures of the installation, though it's not much practical use because of the weird switch.

[Maux]

OK! The lights are installed and I'd like to thank some of our wonderful Chinese friends for their help. As it turned out, the installation wasn't too complicated and only took about 30 minutes all said.

Installation: The headlight enclosure comes off by removing 5 bolts, two on either side by the turning signal mounts, and one underneath, if the bike has a chin the last bolt would be right there.

We (they) were looking for for connector that had my switch in it but after a few minutes they asked if they could simply tie it in the to the running lights that are connected to the same triple switch I use for the headlights. I would really rather that they were connected to this other separate switch (the one I mentioned above) but I figured it would just be a matter of finding it later so I opted for the easier route of just connecting them to my headlight switch. The leads were spliced together and fit into the same connecters used for the running lights and taped up a bit and it was done!

Illumination: The new lights are BRIGHT! I road the bike home and adjusted them a little in the garage. Right now I think their basically pointed at a spot on the ground about 80 or 90 meters in front of the bike. Each light sheds two distinct beams, a central beam that is a very even and bright, and a much wider beam that has some gradients, but is basically pretty even. The two wider beams combined shed light (though it's not very bright) in about 140 degrees in front of the bike. The central beams are quite narrow and only focus light in a 10* arch, directly in front of the bike. As of now, the central beams start shedding light about 6 or 7 meters in front of the bike. The top of this "beam cone" would never hit the ground, though I'm trying to keep them bellow the windshield area of most cars. I think they would provide usable additional lighting for about 100 meters in front of the bike, though on a dark road it would probably be more. Now it's very obvious to me that I would like much more lighting out front. I would like to get two of the 30 watt units sold by the same Taobao store and get a bracket made to mount them on either side just under the headlight. In addition I would like to switch the stock headlight bulb for a more powerful one. I could possibly also get all four LED's (90watt total) mounted to the same bracket under the headlight and this would let me play around with the spread and get favorable coverage for the entire area.

Wattage load: As far as I can tell there is no appreciable hit to my voltage at the battery, with my voltage fluctuating between 14.7 and 14.9 with the new lights on or off. The only noticeable drop in voltage was the headlight, which would drop the voltage average to between, 14.5 and 14.6.

Pictures! (OK, so my camera is a Casio Excilim EX-G1 and it's I can't seem to adjust the shutter speed, but I was using a standard ISO and finally just took pictures until I thought they represented about what I was seeing with my eyes. If one of you guys want to send me one of your nice spare DSLR's I could get some better pictures and it would be well taken care of, unless it's abducted and held for ransom by Somali pirates in which case you might not get it back for several months.)


lights1.jpgThis is about what my light testing area looked like with no additional lighting. Also, the bake was slightly angled when I took these so the lights appear a little higher than they would be on level ground.
lights2.jpgMy new lights, though you can't tell in the photo, actually shed a lot of light around in the entire visible area, though it actually looks dimmer, this is because my camera doesn't allow me to adjust the shutter speed. With the new lights on I can hardly tell my headlight is on, except for an additional orange hue. I would really like to get these tested out on a dark road to get a sense of how they would work in a more practical setting.
lights3.jpgThese are the new lights installed, just about where I wanted them.

lights4.jpgThis basically shows the bolt locations and the HUGE wire bundle which comes out of that equally huge switch. Later I figure I can get the lights connected to whichever switch I want, but I also want to add two more under the headlight so I might wait until then to try to hunt down these connection.
LiZhongShong.jpgThis is the president of the Dalian motorcycle group, Mr. Li. He and the other guys are in the group are all great, very nice and really helpful. Mr. Li knows exactly what he's doing with a bike.

[euphonius]

Nice posts, Maux! Thanks for keeping us updated; it looks like the LED lights are a winner! I hate night riding, but will definitely invest in a set of these.

Are you able to adjust their position? Could you, for example, spread the light wider and lower, so you get a wider field of view?

Very nice that you've hooked up with the Dalian club. Ahem, is that Mr Li's bike parked behind you in the picture?

cheers!

[Barry]

Also thinking of getting a pair of these, is saw there's even a 40W version of them. Still trying to figure out where to put them though, would be nice to have 'm light up the road in the direction the bike is going. On top of the front wheel fender perhaps?!