LED running lights

[Mouse]

I've been playing with various ideas for running lights, that is to say lights to (hopefully) help the bike to be seen by other road users rather than to illuminate the road.

I originally fitted a couple of 55W fog lights to my engine bars, wired via a relay to the dipped headlamp circuit. These were ok, but had a couple of problems:

Firstly, they were too bright. The fog lamp beam pattern didn't really help to illuminate the road, and other road users kept flashing (their lights) at me.

Secondly, the lamps were very small, and got very very hot. So hot in fact, that a trip through a deep ford resulted in cold water touching hot glass, and the lenses shattered.

So I got to thinking about LEDs. Inspired by another posting on this site, I bought some high brightness white LEDs from http://www.ultraleds.com - about £15 for 50. I mounted 16 LEDs on a small it of veroboard, with suitable resistors to run them from 14.5 V.

The wiring arrangement is 4 LEDs in series, with a 100 ohm resistor - for a current draw of 20mA, this gives about 3.1 V across each LED. You can repeat this arrangement in parallel as many times as required - hence my setup has 16 LEDs and 4 resistors.

I mounted the PCB in the metal body of the old (smashed) fog lights. A healthy amount of silicon sealant holds it all together. I made a new lens by cutting up some safety goggles, and stuck that on with silicon sealant too.

Here's the finished result mounted on the bike. A prize for anyone who can name the venue of the photograph

And here's the finished job. The headlight drowns out the LEDs a bit, especially in a photo. I'm quite happy with the result - the LEDs are bright enough to be seen in daylight, and at night are very noticeable without being dazzling.

 

[Les Wassall]

They are very helpful over at Ultraleds, just ordered the side light bulb, with six LED's in, and a stop/tail, the tail light is 225,000 Mcd, should be quite bright, had it in white so it lights the number plate, in red they are even brighter.
At £15.50 for both, I think that’s good value, as there are companies selling the big 40+ rear LED bulbs at £35+ and they are not any better, as I found out it’s the quality of the LED not the amount..
Parking lights now should be nearly zilch in consumption and I’m hoping the side light should be a lot brighter (3X).

 

[Bob Jeffries]

Mouse

When should I come down and collect my prize?

The photo's taken on the road over the Eppynt military ranges, somewhere along Mynydd Bwlch-y-groes between Llywel and Tirabad, in fact at about grid ref SN 85953 32979 - is that accurate enough, I do have a complete GPS track of the whole course

And the lights look good as well, I'll have to see what I can copy

 

[Mouse]

Hehe nice one Bob

I'll buy you your prize from the bar at next year's rally