As some of you know, I've the infatuation with LED's. I've got about a dozen projects in the fire right now for LED upgrades on my Vmax. The most recent being a replacement for the stock turn signal bulbs on the front of my motorcycle. I plan on replacing the rear break light and turn signals with the CBR tail light assembly noted elsewhere on this forum, so it was necessary to replace only the front signals with LED's.
I do not care for all of the aftermarket LED replacement lights I've seen thus far so I decided to keep the stock assemblies as they are and replace the bulbs with LED's. I don't think the stock round turn signals on the front look bad, so the upgrade was the easiest.
I've pulled the front lens off the bike and measured the ID of the lens. Took the time to cut out some aluminum plates to fit just inside the lens and will mount 1-4 XP-E LED's on the plate. How many will depend on the light output per light. The amber XP-E is rated at 51.4 lumens at 350ma It can be ran at 500ma at almost 90 lumens. however this does decrease the lifespan of the LED a little bit. It is still within it's specs so can expect 100,000 hours at 500ma. Since the bulb that is inside has two elements in it for running constantly as well as operating brighter during flashing, multiple LED's will probably need to be incorporated. Makes it a lot easier than running a driver with dual outputs, which might be problematic to find. I want this to be easy, not hard.
Pictured is the plate inside the lens assembly:
Next is the single XP-E LED in comparison to a standard 5mm LED.
As you can see, the LED is incredibly small yet has a significantly larger light output than a simple 5mm LED. The LED it's next to has an output that is only measured in micro candlepower, Or mcd. 5000mcd I think. It's not very impressive output lemme tell ya that.
Presently, I am waiting on some stars to mount the LED's onto. Ordered those from mouser today so, they should be here mid next week. Once I get them, I need to determine if the light output at 500ma on a single LED is sufficient or if multiple LED's is required for running light.
Next I need to determine if a driver is going to be used, or a simple resistor. There are advantages to both. 1. the flasher for these bikes requires a load in order to see the LED's. Using a resistor in the circuit makes it so that it sees the load as well as reduced the voltage to acceptable levels for the LED. The downside of that is, automotive power is incredibly dirty, with lots of spikes in power. A incandescent bulb is capable of handling these power spikes. A LED is not as forgiving. I've blown a few of these LED's on automotive power before so it's required to take the power requirements from auto into consideration.
The Driver is nice in that it keeps the power output constant regardless of input power. No matter how much the voltage spikes from the alternator, the output of the driver is going to remain the same. However, there is no load, so an additional load resistor is required to see the LED's and work with the flasher.
So to start off with, I've decided to go with a simple resistor to begin with. If I have any issues with the setup, I will go back and add in the driver.
The stars showed up and I used Artic silver thermal epoxy to affix the stars onto the aluminum plate. I had to grind the stars down a little bit to get them to fit together in a small enough circle.
I ran a quick and dirty test to see if it works on my bench PSU, and had complete success. I will update the thread in a bit with the video of this test.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3175365/turn test 1.wmv
I had the voltage on my psu set to 14v.
I will update the thread as the build progresses.
ok all is done, i did rewire it so they all came on for running lights at low power and flash at a higher power. wiring diagram is such:
the resistor values are ONLY for the Cree XP-E AMBER LED'S
I WIRED IT UP IN THE SOCKET LIKE SO:
here is a video of it blinkin tonight:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3175365/final.wmv
i will be throwing some diffuser sheet in it to make it less localized around the led's
I do not care for all of the aftermarket LED replacement lights I've seen thus far so I decided to keep the stock assemblies as they are and replace the bulbs with LED's. I don't think the stock round turn signals on the front look bad, so the upgrade was the easiest.
I've pulled the front lens off the bike and measured the ID of the lens. Took the time to cut out some aluminum plates to fit just inside the lens and will mount 1-4 XP-E LED's on the plate. How many will depend on the light output per light. The amber XP-E is rated at 51.4 lumens at 350ma It can be ran at 500ma at almost 90 lumens. however this does decrease the lifespan of the LED a little bit. It is still within it's specs so can expect 100,000 hours at 500ma. Since the bulb that is inside has two elements in it for running constantly as well as operating brighter during flashing, multiple LED's will probably need to be incorporated. Makes it a lot easier than running a driver with dual outputs, which might be problematic to find. I want this to be easy, not hard.
Pictured is the plate inside the lens assembly:
Next is the single XP-E LED in comparison to a standard 5mm LED.
As you can see, the LED is incredibly small yet has a significantly larger light output than a simple 5mm LED. The LED it's next to has an output that is only measured in micro candlepower, Or mcd. 5000mcd I think. It's not very impressive output lemme tell ya that.
Presently, I am waiting on some stars to mount the LED's onto. Ordered those from mouser today so, they should be here mid next week. Once I get them, I need to determine if the light output at 500ma on a single LED is sufficient or if multiple LED's is required for running light.
Next I need to determine if a driver is going to be used, or a simple resistor. There are advantages to both. 1. the flasher for these bikes requires a load in order to see the LED's. Using a resistor in the circuit makes it so that it sees the load as well as reduced the voltage to acceptable levels for the LED. The downside of that is, automotive power is incredibly dirty, with lots of spikes in power. A incandescent bulb is capable of handling these power spikes. A LED is not as forgiving. I've blown a few of these LED's on automotive power before so it's required to take the power requirements from auto into consideration.
The Driver is nice in that it keeps the power output constant regardless of input power. No matter how much the voltage spikes from the alternator, the output of the driver is going to remain the same. However, there is no load, so an additional load resistor is required to see the LED's and work with the flasher.
So to start off with, I've decided to go with a simple resistor to begin with. If I have any issues with the setup, I will go back and add in the driver.
The stars showed up and I used Artic silver thermal epoxy to affix the stars onto the aluminum plate. I had to grind the stars down a little bit to get them to fit together in a small enough circle.
I ran a quick and dirty test to see if it works on my bench PSU, and had complete success. I will update the thread in a bit with the video of this test.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3175365/turn test 1.wmv
I had the voltage on my psu set to 14v.
I will update the thread as the build progresses.
ok all is done, i did rewire it so they all came on for running lights at low power and flash at a higher power. wiring diagram is such:
the resistor values are ONLY for the Cree XP-E AMBER LED'S
I WIRED IT UP IN THE SOCKET LIKE SO:
here is a video of it blinkin tonight:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3175365/final.wmv
i will be throwing some diffuser sheet in it to make it less localized around the led's
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