Would you? I honestly have no idea. I never gave that even a second thought. It was arbitrary where I placed the fuse and switch in that diagram.
Generally a fuse should protect the whole circuit from shorting to the frame, so close to the battery and before the switch is best. As long as your wire and switch are rated for the amps you don't need a relay. (eg, a 10 amp switch and #14 wire should be heavy and physically robust enough for this small of a load. You could probably go smaller but won't save much money.
Thanks. I'll make sure to put it between the switch and the battery than. The rest of the diagram looks okay though? The switch I have is rated to 30amps. I have an inline mini-blade fuse holder rated to 30 amps. I figured I'd use a 5 or 10 amp fuse since the lights are only 0.85 amp each. I already have 18ga wire, so I guess I'd just use that since they can handle roughly 16amps. Plus the wires from the lights look to be about 20ga, so that should work out fine, I would think. What do you think?
Hey Sanjoh, Will your rotary dimmer control the output of a 55 watt HID ballast? Or will the smoke come out of both...... Cheers, Tony.
Just got 'em mounted, wired, and properly aimed. Thanks for the wiring help guys. Wow! What a difference they make! I'm definitely glad I went with the model 30s for extending my low beams out a bit. The tight pattern is just what I needed.
I think your work is just fine. I guess I assumed you were wiring a pair of 60s, which would pull more amps. Even so, the difference in voltage drop (the loss caused by the resistance of the wire)between 14 and 18 gauge is probably negligible and affects led lights less than halogens anyway...with 100 W halogens you can see the difference in the color and power of the beam if you go cheap on the size of the wire, and worse case you will melt it. I personally prefer to stay at or larger than 14 for any additional auto wiring, but I have to admit it is mostly from old habits in dealing with larger loads and greater distances that tintops impose. There is something to be said for the thicker insulation that larger wire generally has, but if smaller wire is routed and secured the right way that becomes less of an issue. An important point is that your wire needs to have enough current carrying capacity to blow the fuse you have installed. From your figures you have allowed for this. Many trailer homes are reduced to a pile of ash ( some would say this is an improvement) because they have very few outlet circuits, and fuses or breakers have been replaced with larger sizes to prevent nuisance tripping from a larger load than the wiring was designed to carry. In a well-designed circuit, the fuse will stop current flow before the colorful plastic falls off. A fire on a bike is a scary thing. One of mine had flames coming from under the tank as I stood next to it at the gas station with the gas cap open and fuel filler hose in hand. It was an OEM starter solenoid that picked the least fortunate moment to melt down. No fuse between the battery and the solenoid meant that all the smoke got out and it quit working. Some cobbled together parts from NAPA got me going again and the only permanent damage was to my undershorts.
I should have specified the lights I was using. I had actually started another thread a few weeks ago asking about LED lighting options. Once I found this thread, I abandoned my other one to post here... But neglected to mention the lights I had decided on. Yikes! That is definitely a bad time to have flames pop out from under your seat! I have a friend who had his Daytona 675 burn to the ground due to a shorted wire. Luckily his decided not to fail on him at the gas pump. Thanks for all your help with this.
They are dimmable, but it has to be done internally. There is a resistor on one of the circuits that can be modified to do this. Here is a commercially done adjustable ballast. http://retro-solutions.net/product-info.php?ADJUSTABLE_DIGITAL_HID_BALLAST-pid674.html30-50 watt ballast Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
That should work. No, but a pair of 60s will make you forget about the HID Great to hear you are happy with the lights. How about a pic of your install?
I mounted them on the fork reflector extension bolt (with gobs of loctite). It was a very easy install with no modifications required (except to mount the switch). My pictures suck, but here they are:
Let me preface this by saying these lamps ROCK, I'm well satisfied with my purchase, and sanjoh has swapped dozens of mails with me in the name of customer service. Fast shipping, reasonable value - will do business again. However, the install wasn't exactly plug and play. TL;DR: If you have electrical problems, add a 1000uF bypass cap where you tie these lamps into your electrical system, and/or connect it directly to the battery (with a relay, of course). After reading http://f650.com/forum/showthread.php?23471-ADV-Monster-LED-Auxillary-Light-Teardown, I did a teardown of the lamps when I first got them, to install the HD brackets and investigate the heat transfer compound situation. Substantially the same, although I didn't look extremely closely at the LED stars (the LEDs look like the CREE chip they are supposed to be), but it has the thermal protection switch and a little light on the paste. Couple bucks for some grease later (I think a really good investment - both inside on the LED board retaining ring, and where the rear heatsink screws on) and I was ready to put them on the bike. It's evident that these lamps are built from components originally for another purpose. But they're not a low quality lamp by any means. They're actually _more_ compact than they look in most photos, sturdy without being heavy. The brackets don't look nearly as flimsy, either. I looked at some of the Clearwater Glenda lamps on another guy's bike on the ferry, and although their fit and finish is good/better, these have a _lot_ better (IMHO, not measured) ability to sink heat because of the longer lamp (about 2" longer, maybe?) and finned heat sink on the back. I bought a pair of the model 60 lamps for fender mounts on my FJR1300. I went with the rotary dimmer and the HD brackets. The rotary dimmer has some tiny wires on it - maybe 20GA, 22GA. I'm not sure it's not under-wired for a pair of the model 60s, that's nearly 5 amps. It won't surprise me if I have to replace the dimmer at some point. The HD brackets are a worthwhile $10 - the stock bracket has thin, phillips head screws to fasten it, sanjoh includes a much more sensible (and heavier) allen head screw and nylock nut with the HD bracket, saving a trip to the hardware store. The 19mm spacer that sits inside the bracket, however, needs to be ground down to about 18mm for the HD bracket due to the thicker metal - a replacement isn't included, and you can't tighten them down without it. I reversed the mounts, as several have - Bolts up fine with the FJR fender screws, but if you reverse them you'll save yourself some cursing aiming them if you just cut down an allen wrench in the first place - there's not much clearance to the lamp once reversed, and (as intended) you can't swing them out as much once reversed. Physical install completed, I ran my wires - although I intended to run it as an on/off switch, and tie into the high beams for full-bright override, I ended up just running the lamps from a relay-switched fusebox whenever the keys are on, and a handlebar switch to toggle the brights. Alas, the FJR has no real bar space, and I hate to drill into a fairing. So finding a switch was a little difficult. These are _awesome_: http://www.pashnit.com/product/pmr/bar_switches.html and what I went with, but the FJR _also_ has a darn offset to the clutch mount screws, so it had to go on the brake side. Then the moment of truth! Truth, I say to you: THESE ARE SO BLOODY GREAT! On bright, a pair of these will completely swamp the low beam of the FJR (which really has some pretty fine stock lights), and adds a _lot_ to the high beam, especially out to the mid-distance sides where I really wanted more light in the middle of nowhere, as well as brightening up the center. Plus, the next FF who doesn't dip their brights in the middle of Utah at night is going to need a service animal for the rest of their life. Even dimmed down to where you can look at them (virtually the bottom of the dial), they add a fair amount of contrast/brightness to street signs at night. --- Ok, so here's the issue, presented so _hopefully_ some others can benefit from my fussing: After installing the lights, my GPS (Garmin 2730) would just absolutely fall over in a heap whenever the lights were on. _Apparently_ no power on when you turned on the switch. Some playing with it showed that if I turned the lights on _after_ the GPS, and left them all the way dim, it would work OK. then as I turned them up the GPS would go to a blank screen. Some further research revealed a diagnostic mode, and the oddest darn thing - the GPS has a voltmeter in it, and as I turned the lights from off to full, the VDC went from ~12.9V (bike off, just on battery) to 17+VDC right before it died. Sanjoh theorized that it has an overvoltage protection feature, and that looks like what's happening - it sees a high voltage, and shuts itself off. A cheap digital voltmeter shows exactly the same behavior. That's sorta surprising on a battery, y'know? Although I tried it, a liberal application of clamp-on ferrite beads had no meaningful effect. Thankfully, I happen to have an analog oscilloscope. It shows something surprising: The Garmin voltmeter isn't completely full of it. The scope showed 2 things (measured at the fusebox): ( 1 ) Spikes at 100kHz of around +21VDC at peak, +9VDC at trough. This is continuous at full intensity, so presumably the switching rate of the driver. ( 2 ) Dimmer was operating at 1kHz, and not adding any additional noise. In retrospect, it stands to reason. Switching a 5A load isn't trivial. But these drivers are _noisy_ electrically. After consultation with a number of kind folks in my riding group, some of whom are EEs, I added some bypass capacitors. Things I didn't do which were suggested by very smart people(tm): ( 1 ) Wire the lamps directly to the battery. This would, I'm sure, help a lot. However, I already have 2 extra terminals on the battery (aux fusebox and battery tender lead), the FJR battery is awkwardly placed for adding more (in the fairing), and it's easy to do things at the fusebox. ( 2 ) Run the wires to the fusebox and from the fusebox to the lamps as twisted pairs. I'll probably still do this eventually. ( 3 ) Get the bypass caps as close to the load (lamps) as possible. Unfortunately, if you put the capacitors _inside_ the lamp housing, you have physical space constraints, extra heat, and you are (as told to me in a way which makes sense) extremely limited in how much you can dim the lamps by PWM, because the voltage drops. The next chance to add a bypass cap is ~1 meter later, at the dimmer. Things I did do: ( 1 ) Add a bypass capacitor at the fusebox I started with a 10uF electrolytic cap and a 0.01uF ceramic, and that _immediately_ stopped the GPS from falling over. The spikes were down to +/- 2VDC, and the GPS voltmeter basically didn't notice. ASCII wiring diagram: + -------------------------- Dimmer + | C + A P - | - -------------------------- Dimmer - (It looks like you're just adding a short if, like me, you have only minimal electronics skills, but you're not. The capacitor is (very roughly) an open circuit to DC, and a short for AC/spikes) I switched that out for (only) a 1000uF 35v electrolytic capacitor (Radio Shack actually still stocks these) and it's regulated to ~ +/- 0.5VDC That really should be IMHO adequate for anything which expects to live in an automotive electrical enviroment (alternators aren't exactly electrically quiet). But it's still quite a bit of noise. Tonight, I tried adding a 2200uF capacitor at the same place, then also added the 1000uF I'd had on it. No significant difference between that and just the 1000uF cap. As of tonight, I think it's dealt with as well as I'm going to, and I'm going to quit playing with it and just ride it. I can see this noise being a (big) problem in a couple of situations: ( a ) My problem, Garmin GPS falling over ( b ) Radio/CB noise, this isn't VHF, but it's around the same problem as alternator noise ( c ) Possibly the source of CanBus problems In conclusion, I'd buy these lamps again, and they're really awesome, but be aware that they're (potentially) a lot more difficult to integrate to your bike than an incandescent.
Thanks for the review NormanH. Incorrect, the components are designed and built as an led light. The components used would not be functional in anything besides an led light. The wire sizing is more than adequate for the expected loads. If you have any issues with the dimmer, let me know, it is covered by our warranty. No grinding required. A simple tweak of the ears/pivot with some pliers and the spacer fits. An easier approach is to remove the light from the bracket during installation, easy access. Seems the GPS is a bit more sensitve to voltage than a GPS with an internal battery. I take it Garmin built in some interesting circuits to insure the the DC power is within spec to protect the unit. I Always recomend direct battery connection. Avoid the canbus Cool, mind if I borrow your oscope since you aren't using it now
Did anyone post one up?? I can't seem to find one in the 28 pages. Or is the one at the top of this page OK??
I meant they weren't initially designed as an automotive lamp. Not in my experience. I tried that, and the ears are out of parallel/don't fit inside the bracket before the spacer fits. About the third time I did that, I ground down an allen wrench :) Removing them is fine for installation, but a pain for aiming.
Any pics of the 30s taken in bright daylight from a far distance, aimed a few degrees away from the camera? It would be the view of an oncoming driver, basically. I am torn between 30s and 44s. 30s produce only 500 fewer lumens but require less than half the wattage of the 44s. But 44s have a wide beam, so I want to see whether the 30s are easily visible to an oncoming driver (the main reason I want aux lights). With heated clothing I already use, I want to keep the electrical load as low as possible.
Not much difference between the lights during the day. You can see them from over 1/2 mile away. I noticed this the first time I swapped bikes with another rider! Another option to keep the load down is an LED controller. Using a high beam bypass model lets you set a dimmed setting that only uses a few watts, usually less than 5 with model 60s. When you need full output, hit your high beam and the lights go to full power, turn high beam off and they return to the dimmed setting. For a limited time, at no extra cost, we are including a plug n play wiring setup when a high beam bypass dimmer is purchased with lights.