EC300 trail lighting and other electrical fun.

[Neil E.]

Originally Posted by VxZeroKnots

Okay cool, so the cyclops rectifier plugs into the stock headlight plug and thus floats the DC load at the headlight mask which is not grounded to the frame.

So it is essentially a mini DC system which lives behind the headlight mask/numberplate and only has power when the engine is running.

I suspect their unit has some sort of capacitor in it based off my measurements and also from the fact that the light doesn't flicker at low engine RPM.

Correct on all statements, however not flickering at idle is difficult to pin down. There is not necessarily a capacitor involved. The LED emitter voltage is much lower than 12VDC and the emitters can be grouped for connection. No way to know whether they are series or parallel connected or if some other components are hidden in the potting compound.

If there was a capacitor, the LEDs would extinguish slower. A big capacitor might give several seconds of operation after the engine stops turning. It is nice that they don't flicker.

[VxZeroKnots]

Originally Posted by Neil E.

Correct on all statements, however not flickering at idle is difficult to pin down. There is not necessarily a capacitor involved. The LED emitter voltage is much lower than 12VDC and the emitters can be grouped for connection. No way to know whether they are series or parallel connected or if some other components are hidden in the potting compound.

If there was a capacitor, the LEDs would extinguish slower. A big capacitor might give several seconds of operation after the engine stops turning. It is nice that they don't flicker.

What about if I have my multimeter hooked up to the output of reg/rec (light unplugged) and it takes probably ~5 seconds for the voltage to drop below 9 volts, and ~10+ seconds for the meter to read zero after I kill the engine. Am I erroneous in thinking that indicates a capacitor in the system?

[Neil E.]

No, you are totally correct. Your numbers indicate the powering down effect that a capacitor provides, however you have to look at it a bit differently. If your connected lights took that long to power down, I'd be impressed with the performance. In reality the capacitor is only supporting the few milliamps drain of your multimeter so it's not a fair test.

Ten seconds of operation with your lights connected would be great. That might be enough time to even find your bike in the dark!

[VxZeroKnots]

The light certainly doesnt stay lit that long, I was merely guess as to why I am not experiencing any flickering.

[VxZeroKnots]

Whelp it's been a while but I ended up finally buying the ADV monster f40 light bar and a cycra stadium number plate. In the mean time I've been rocking the cyclops LED headlight bulb and it works awesome. Unfortunately I can't ever leave well enough alone and the rubbing of the fan housing on the headtube bothered me.

The light bar is huge! The measurements are posted on the site but it just seems bigger now that it's in front of me.



Haven't gotten too far but here is the general idea:



Notice I've routed the front brake line like a rallye bike or baja bike. Before anyone says anything about it getting caught on branches also notice it is still laterally inside the width of the radiators so whether the brake line is there or not if you catch a substantial branch there you are going to have problems regardless.

More to follow.

[fst96se]

Mount that puppy up so we can see how it looks! Er, I mean, works!

[VxZeroKnots]

Soon enough

I did get all the wiring taken care of today, I still have to think up a good way to mount the light bar but took the opportunity to clean up the mess behind the mask.

I ordered two waterproof connections with the light bar as the three-prong headlight connectors take up a bunch of space and are just cheesy in general.

Wired into the rectifier, it was a pain to keep track of what was supposed to connect to what but I was able to somehow keep everything straight.



notice I isolated the unused white wires with some heat shrink.

much cleaner



the finished layout. the reg/rec is double sided sticky taped to the number plate and the connector position should make it easy to install or remove the light bar.



there is a bit of a gap down at the bottom but i've seen stock bikes that look worse imho (bmw 450 and husabergs) and it isn't as bad in person.



Next to mount the light bar and cruise it around in the dark.

[VxZeroKnots]

After a hard day of riding and snapping off my rear brake lever I spent some time making a bracket for the light. The stainless bits the light comes with are much better than what i was able to hack together out of alloy but it will do for now.

Started with a cardboard template in order to minimize mistakes



looking good



getting there











Looking pretty good, the horizontal cutoff is the top of the light. No fender shadow of consequence though. woohoo!



I didn't get any good photos but the throw of the light is impressive. Easily goes out about 70 or so meters.

for reference here are photos with the stock light and then the LED "bulb" in the stock housing (which is perfectly sufficient for just screwing around or getting back off the trail when you get caught out)

stock and worthless



LED bulb

[Neil E.]

That light bar really puts out the illumination. What is the current draw for the F40? I didn't see any specs on their site.

[VxZeroKnots]

They post 38 watts @ 12V DC so that would give ~3.17A right? That should leave me about .6A spare before I start draining the battery.

I'll go through the packaging and see if i can find exact specs.