LED spot light.

[ME 109]

OMG!

He does make my posts bigger
I need a smaller roo!

[Sibbo]

Something I forgot to mention yesterday. The thin wall pipe I used to make the brackets is about 38mm inside diameter and the fork tube I clamped it to is 35 mm. I used a protective bushing of black agricultural polythene pipe, 1.5mm wall. It worked well.

[grant81rs]

Gidday fellas,

I brought these little LED spots and mounted them on the crash bars but not so much for night riding, more so just to be seen on overcast dull days on country roads and I also installed a new headlight relay from http://www.easternbeaver.com/index.html which made the high/low more brighter, now I just have to update the headlight glode itself...

Low beam



High beam and spots

[Major Softie]

You installed a new headlight relay that makes your low and high beam brighter???

Splain.

[grant81rs]

Gidday Fellas,

Major I may have been a little eager in my earlier explanation.

OK so after reading and trolling through different "K1100" forums earlier in the year, I was told by a good few owners that an excellent upgrade is one of a new headlight relay from the link I mentioned earlier, gives a more direct and stronger power source? see link http://www.easternbeaver.com/Main/Wirin ... _kits.html

Now I am not one for electrical discussion, I don't fully understand the stuff apart from the fact the it costs me shit loads every 3 months and the farking kiddies don't help by leaving every light on in the house and having every bloody powerpoint running some sort of charger out of it.

Anyway I had the auto electrician wire up the spots and install the new relay and yes to me the original globe looked a little brighter once we turned it back on after having installed it and the sparky agreed to but he may well of just said that to be polite but he also said it was a good thing to good after 20 years.

[PITAPan]

Gidday Fellas,

Major I may have been a little eager in my earlier explanation.

OK so after reading and trolling through different "K1100" forums earlier in the year, I was told by a good few owners that an excellent upgrade is one of a new headlight relay from the link I mentioned earlier, gives a more direct and stronger power source? see link http://www.easternbeaver.com/Main/Wirin ... _kits.html

Now I am not one for electrical discussion, I don't fully understand the stuff apart from the fact the it costs me shit loads every 3 months and the farking kiddies don't help by leaving every light on in the house and having every bloody powerpoint running some sort of charger out of it.

Anyway I had the auto electrician wire up the spots and install the new relay and yes to me the original globe looked a little brighter once we turned it back on after having installed it and the sparky agreed to but he may well of just said that to be polite but he also said it was a good thing to good after 20 years.

I always thought Eastern Beaver made some nice kits, and they've gotten better over the years. They have all the parts, a lot of the work done and they cover some bases that might not occur to the first timer.

3 downsides:

1) they are expensive. You can build your own for a small fraction of the price. USD10 or so. That said, I don't doubt the quality of the EB stuff and for what they put into a low volume product, I can't question their price overmuch.

2)They are not as efficient as they could be. You can get waaay into overkill with your own design, not to mention better wire.

3) You don't understand the circuit as thoroughly as you might if you built your own. This matters if you have to do a repair in the middle of the night far from home and 'net resources and many years from the original install when what you knew of it has been forgotten.

I put a priority on this last one. I forget what I did---but I know how the circuit works so it's easy enough to look it over and understand what does what. it's a simple circuit and one used in critical places like the starter. Worth knowing cold.

A relay and some big dedicated wire is always good for better light output and longer switch life*. The additional fusing is excellent protection and is handy for Dx. installing without disturbing the bikes original harness is simple. You bring your relay control ritht off the headlight socket with ordinary auto spade terminals and then have a new headlamp socket for the relay output back to the bulb. I like the older type side wired H4 sockets rather than the back wired type. More compact. I also like completely sealed (potted) relays. Get a replacement anywhere sealed or otherwise. Avoid specialized anything. I don't like relay sockets. Quick to replace a relay for sure, but hard to keep clean and corrosion free. posilock connections are cute--if you're selling the bike. Crimps, waterproof crimps or solder are good for as long as you own the machine and as far as you ride. I've had everything else get flakey at some point.

I run my horn on a relay too. Same reasons. It also ensures I always have a spare on hand should a headlight relay go out at night. Hasn't happened since I changed to sealed type. But I can limp to some truck stop at night without the horn. It also backs up my starter relay.

I use marine wire. Short lengths are cheap from the scrap bin at marine places (it is sold bulk off big spools). The stuff has a really good jacket--tougher and more flame resistant than auto wire. Good flexibility. I use 10ga for my main power feeds to my relays. No voltage drop and way over the fuse ratings. It's overbuilt but the performance is is as good as it can be and the failure points pretty much eliminated.





* sometimes a low draw through a switch can be problematic. If the switch is kept clean, no problems.

[Major Softie]

If your K did not have a relay initially, then I would certainly understand how a relay would help, but I thought they all already did. If it already had one, then a higher wattage headlamp would probably benefit from larger wire and a higher capacity relay. But, if it already had a relay, then I would be surprised if the stock headlight would get noticeably brighter just from a "better" relay or replacement wiring. A 65w headlight just doesn't need very large wire, especially when it's only a couple feet long.

OTOH, I'm assuming (always dangerous) that BMW didn't put inadequate wire in the headlight harness. 18G would probably stay under a 2% drop.

[Sibbo]

I finally got around to asking the electrician to wire in the Chinese LEDs for me, he installed a relay under the tank and an isolating switch which I legally have to have here. I took her for a run tonight down my hilly twisty road to a flat bit at the bottom end. In these photos I've stopped about 200 m from the reflective sign at the end.

The first is my standard high beam .



This is the LEDs plus high beam .



The photos are crap and I don't know why, the camera is only picking up the brightest pools of light and there is plenty more , just less intense . (Any photographers reading ?) My high beam looks way better than that in reality but the LEDs are BRILLIANT in reality and far better than the photo! The pool of light extended an easy 120m and I think with a bit of adjustment to the angle it would be better. I haven't done any real set up so far, just bolted them on basically parallel to the ground / lens face vertical.

IIRC the ad said they cover 15 degrees and as I have them is pretty good. I'll do a longer run at night sometime soon and re assess that .

I'm VERY happy with them and straight off I can't imagine riding a country road without them . I avoided one suicidal wallaby tonight and one slightly depressed bandicoot who was preparing to make a run for my wheels. Two lives and a broken leg saved already .

[barryh]

I

The photos are crap and I don't know why, the camera is only picking up the brightest pools of light and there is plenty more , just less intense . (Any photographers reading ?) My high beam looks way better than that in reality but the LEDs are BRILLIANT in reality and far better than the photo!

The pictures are good enough to show the improvement with LEDs.

Photo's are never going to provide a perfect copy of what you see because they don't have the same sensitivity to light as our eyes. The way to get reasonably good comparative pictures would be to use a camera with fixed manual exposure settings. Auto cameras especially with spot metering where they only detect light in the centre of the image can produce strange results often ending up with an overall under exposed image.

[Chuey]

Hot Dang! I'm in! I gotta go back in this thread and get the particulars. That is such an improvement. Congratulations on such good results.

Chuey