LED's Anyone??

Anyone running LED's on their bandit? Tail? Blinkers? Those silly dinky running lights (that are a waste of amps) next to the head light? What have you got? What's worked? What hasn't?

There is a ton of info on here about LED indicators, relays DRLs etc.

Getting an LED as bright as the Bandit's incandescent side indicators is challenging - most indicators LEDs don't have too many actual LED modules facing forward.

Here's what I have changed/added:

I have LED signal lights on my '00 KLR. Was a bit of a project getting them to do the job as the KLR total lost circuit for the signal light was designed just for regular bulbs. Work very fine and very bright. In fact, most tail and brake light on many new vehicals now are LED. The Bandit 1250 would probably be easier due to the different circuit for each side..

I put LED rear blinkers in when relocating them due to the hard side cases (didn't like the way the OEMs flopped around after relocation). The LED ones I bought are brighter than the stockers, but did require a resistor (I just bought the replacement relay that fits in place of the OEM relay - much less fuss than wiring up the resistors). Works like a champ, better visibility from behind, happy camper.

the other led thread is great.

I just built an led tail light that functions as blinkers. There are no incandescent bulbs left on my bandit.




The flash difference.


It's about 2x brighter than the stock bulb.

NICE MOD!

That tail/flasher mod looks fantastic! I would love to see a short video of it in actual operation, but it is easy to see that it provides excellent illumination...

How difficult is it to build on of these? It looks as though it could be a fun and useful project for a cold winter weekend when the snow is flying!

It wasn't too hard, I can write up the steps involved when I get to my computer.

what about the headlight?? are you running a trucklite LED sealed beam lamp?

I'm actually running a 55w hid projector retrofit.

Thogert said:

I just built an led tail light that functions as blinkers. There are no incandescent bulbs left on my bandit.

Click to expand...

Very nice. I started this for my vstrom but got off track. Did you just use diodes and resistors or is this microcircuit controlled? My build was planning on using a picaxe so I could have it flash and control the turn signals too.


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I just used diodes because they are cheap and so am I.

So to do it you can use your stock taillight, but I had a clear lens one on my bike so that's what I used.

You basically need leds (I used 40 aligent HPWT leds, which are a better color and a lot brighter than the cheap china leds), a soldering board (also called a prototype board) which can be found on ebay, and resistors to drop the voltage down to where you need it for your led strings. You also need a basic understanding of electricity.

So step 1 when you have all your parts is to open up the taillight. Probably the hardest part. I baked mine in the oven at 210* for about 7 min to try to soften up the glue holding the lens on the reflector. Get a longer screwdriver and carefully pry the edge of the plastic around the lens until you can get between the lens and reflector just enough to separate them. Work your way around until you can pull it off. Like I said, you need to be careful because you can crack or chip the lens if you put too much force on it.

Step 2 is now you can cut out a rough shape of the reflector in your board so it fits fairly snug. I got mine so that it wouldn't move around once I wedged it in a little.

Step 3 is to figure out what kind of configuration you want. I went with 4 high because that is what would fit and I was planning on doing 4 in series with 10 series' in parallel (well more like 5 in parallel per side for the flashing function) so that is what worked for me. Of course I tapered it off on the edges to match the shape of the lens, but still keeping in mind that I HAD to have the total # of leds be divisible by 4 to make the wiring work. (You can go with 3 or even 2 in series if you want, but you will need more resistors and the wiring gets a little more difficult.)

Step 4 is figuring out the wiring. If you go with the 4 in series and with the HPWT leds I can tell you that you will want a resistor for each series that is valued at about 50ohms (just to be safe). I personally used two 120ohm resistors in parallel per series because I had a bunch laying around. (comes out to 60ohms in total) If you decide to go with a different type of led, you will need to find out what the forward voltage and current for that led is and plug it into a resistor calculator like this. If you do that, make sure you add up the total voltage you will be running through the leds for the entire series.

After all that you can solder the leds in place and start running wires. Once that's done, I suggest you test your work to make sure it is all good.

For the parking function, I used a smaller resistor to drop the voltage a little bit more to the entire housing. I can't remember the exact value I used, but I used the information aligent has available online to figure out about what voltage I needed to run through them to get the desired dimming effect. When I did my car's taillights, I used a pwm for the dimming function which works a lot better, but I didn't want to waste the space in my bike for that.

Wiring up the turn signals was a bit tedious. I had one ground wire to the entire housing and a positive wire to each of the sides. Each positive wire had to be tied into the brake signal and their respective flasher signals. Therein is the main reason for the diodes. I had 2 diodes per side. One would allow the brake signal to come from the brake leavers and into the array, but not from the other direction. The other diode on each side allowed the voltage to come from the turn signal to the array, but not back through. After both diodes were placed in line the wires were tied together and went to the array positives.

The purpose of them was so when the brake light would turn on, the diode on the turn signal wires would stop the voltage from going into the turn signal circuit and lighting up all the turn signals on both sides every time you hit the brake. And the one on the brake lights kept the turn signal from leaking over to the other side of the array causing the entire thing to flash, instead of just the one side.

Anyway, once it's all wired and you are sure it is how you like it, glue / epoxy / whatever the board into the reflector housing. Then seal up the lens to the reflector. I used OCI butyl because I had some laying around from my multiple projector retrofits. Plug it all in (or I suppose you could ghetto rig it with electrical tape and twisting wires, but I don't recommend it) and make sure it works as you intended.


Phew, I'll see if I can get a good vid of the turn signals, my camera phone can't distinguish the side to side flashing because it's just too bright.

I know this sounds absurb, but what about just buying LED replacement lights for the intended function?

You know, turn/running =1157's, etc, etc.

Don't forget the necessary replacement modulator.

Larry

If you can find one anywhere near as bright let me know. Plus you don't get the same satisfaction as when you build it yourself.

Thank you for taking time to write up the detailed description of your methods! I appreciate it.

I'm also afraid it might exceed my meager electrical skills, but may file this idea away for that cold, snowy winter project I mentioned. A better understanding of LED technology and wiring schemes would be beneficial on many levels, as well as making the tail end of the cycle much more noticeable/safe!

Thanks again.
Don

I could draw up a schematic for you if you ever wanted.

VFRRider said:

I know this sounds absurb, but what about just buying LED replacement lights for the intended function?

You know, turn/running =1157's, etc, etc.

Don't forget the necessary replacement modulator.

Larry

Click to expand...

I bought a premade led unit for my Strom... It was dismal. The LEDs didn't line up with the optics, so at certain angles, you couldn't even see much light. That and the brake was about as bright as run with the stockers. So I decided to crack it open since it had a clear lens

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