Superbrightled driving light mount

[BillyDoc]

I received my "super cheap" LED lights from Superbrightled.com and am quite pleased. They are very ruggedly constructed, and have Cree LEDs inside. I ordered the double, so each light is rated at 1500 lumen and cost $50. I just mounted them today and it isn't dark yet, so I haven't seen them work at night, but preliminary viewing indicates that they will light up my life nicely. I mainly wanted them for daylight use anyway, as I'm really tired of people pulling out in front of me and making me test my ABS brakes, which I am delighted with and still have the attached skin to prove they work.

I have a good set of machine tools, so I made brackets to mount the lights on the front engine hanger bolt. The brackets are made from stainless steel, and painted black for cosmetic reasons. Hopefully the pictures are self-explanatory. For power, I put together a "solid state relay" with a MOSFET transistor and some other parts I had lying about, and have included a circuit diagram for those who like that approach. I like it because the input to the MOSFET (a protection circuit) only draws 0.006 mA, and the MOSFET has an ON resistance of only 0.006 ohms . . . so the circuit "cost" is negligible and there is no appreciable heating, plus no inductive spikes back into the circuit from a relay coil. (Which could be suppressed with a diode across the coil, of course.)

Enjoy!

 

[Phil Tarman]

Good looking lights with a great looking installation, Billy Doc. One question: if your bike were to take a nap, would the lights hit or is the crash guard aligned to keep 'em off the ground?

 

[Rob]

That looks very good. Nice job! I like the mount location as well.

 

[Bear]

That is a beautiful installation.

 

[karl]

Let us know how heat resistant the circuit boards driving those LED's are.

 

[BillyDoc]

Thanks for the kind words everyone!

Phil,

I think when she sleeps she will hit the rear corner of the light and (hopefully) rotate the bracket upward to minimize damage. I'm not at all sure about that, though, and I'm also not sure exactly how she lies when resting. It's an experiment I'm avoiding.

Karl,

I presume you're concerned about heat from the exhaust pipes, as I am. When thinking about the brackets I was juggling three variables: 1) I wanted to get the lights as far forward of the exhaust pipes as possible, but the greater that distance the longer the lever arm on the bracket. These lights are inside a fairly heavy chunk of aluminum. As it is, the light rides about 1.5" to the right of the left pipe, and about 3.5" forward of the right pipe. 2) I wanted to have the lights as wide apart as possible so the beams clear the wheel and are as visible as possible, and: 3) I wanted them close enough to clear the ground when my baby is resting on her side. As it turned out, the lateral inward limit was the rubber radiator pipes, which I did compress slightly to snug the lights inward.

I set the lights with the face perpendicular to level as a first approximation of "adjusted" and that proved to be a bit high. But WOW! The do put out some light. Even with the beams too high, they are narrow enough so nobody flashed me last night, and I had an extremely well lighted lane straight ahead. Another plus, the wheel and shocks are well enough lighted to provide some nice visibility from the side. A black bike at night is not the best idea. I think some nice reflective tape is going to find a home somewhere on there.

I'm quite pleased with the lights, it remains to be seen how long they survive the environment.

Bill

 

[Phil Tarman]

I'm quite pleased with the lights, it remains to be seen how long they survive the environment.

Bill, I'm guessing that the heat from the exhaust won't be an issue. You could hold your hand an inch and a half from the exhaust pipe w/o any problem I think. Especially when you're moving. My guess is that the heat from the LEDs (or their circuit boards) will be greater than the heat from the exhaust. (Lots of guessin' goin' on here, huh?)

I had some concern about the fender mount and road shock, but that hasn't been a problem in about 50,000 miles.

 

[BillyDoc]

That's good to know, Phil! Your question about the bike's sleeping position got me thinking about that issue, and this morning I did some experimenting with raising the lights (rotating the brackets) to see if I could improve the clearance. I think I was successful. In the pictures below the "New front view" would have been more useful if I had aligned the tires . . . but I guess the coffee hadn't quite soaked in. In any case, if you hold a straight-edge up to the image just to the edge of the front tire and the triangular "resting point" you can see the light (barely) clears. It looks like the muffler doesn't, though.

On the picture labeled "Side looking down" I tried to align the "resting point" and the two tires, and there the straight-edge definitely shows clearance. The only problem is that I had to push the radiator hose over a little more. I don't know if that will cause a problem or not. Next summer will answer that question though.

Bill

 

[Phil Tarman]

The muffler doesn't quite clear when the bike is on its right side. But it looks to me as if your lights should be OK. You might scuff the paint on a corner of the housing a little bit, and you might have to realign them but neither of those are big issues.

Now I've got to wonder if your brackets would work on my bike with its OEM undercowl.