Motorcycle lighting project (looking for advice)

[lotsaluck]

I was not getting much input on another site I posted this so thought I'd move the discussion here.

I have been upgrading my CNC mill (lots of trouble in doing so) so not very active lately.
I am working right now on the design phase of two additional lights for my KLR motorcycle and other uses. crazy The current design for each light is to use 6 XRE P4's. They will operate in two groups of 3 with the low beam group of 3 being mounted on a 20 degree downward aiming portion of the housing and on at 350 ma all the time. 2 of this group will have 40 degree optics, the third having 20 degree optics. The other group of three will be mounted pointing straight out (90 degrees to bade) and all will have 20 degree optics. When the high beams are selected all led's will switch on at 750 ma. Clearly this setup will get hot since I will keep the physical size of the housing to a bare minimum so each light will be plumbed into the bikes cooling system with small teflon tubing.

Happy to hear thoughts and ideas from all on this plan.

Ideas for housing design as well as strobe circuits for them are still needed.

 

[Drewfus2101]

The first thing I would do is pull out the stock light and design around that. Understand that is all the are that you will have. You probably won't have enough area for 6 LEDs or their heatsinks. Take the stock light to a machine shop and see what they can come up with in the form of a heatsink.

Also, for driving them, since your going for a pretty complicated setup (adding the stobe part) you might have to talk to Cutter Electronics. They have some pretty impressive stuff. They can probably build you anything. Minus the strobe, wiring would be pretty easy.

 

[dom]

Hi Lotsaluk
You will be blinding ALL traffic with 20deg or more optics.
On my pushbike for road riding i use 10deg optics with Seouls and these would be the maximum i'd use .I'd get some elliptical to make a wider beam.
You will have trouble with hi/low beam

A couple bFlex from Taskled might do the job of running them and still get the strobe,though your motorbike battery might not be a high enough voltage.
You would be also looking at 2 buttons to operate the 3 LED groups separately.
6 LEDs won't be enough for high speeds of a motorbike.

Maybe have a look at some OSTARS -then you would only have 2 LEDs and you could use 2 MaxFlex.
Use some cowling on the optic or reflector to stop the spill blinding everyone and they would work on the motorbike battery.

Cheers
Dom

 

[VidPro]

what he said ^ degrees in OPTICs usually refer to a HALF angle, that might be important when choosing optics or reflector items.
a 10* would be minimum for high speed road, and 20* and 25* for low speed or off road flood or something, 25* can be very floody, good for cameras on wide, and human pererferal vision and all. just make sure you know how they are measuring the angle stuff at least, the 20 could be 40.

dont ask me what a half angle is or how they figure it??? it just threw me after having protracted my projection, and percieved the perception, but ended up paled by a problem and off by a protuberant parsec