mrsdnf's machine made 7th Annual BLF/OL contest entry. Updated and finished from post 6.

Very Nice Work Machining, Design, and Implementation of your Bikes upgraded lights. :+1:
It is fun to have an idea and make adjustments on the fly as needed. :smiley:
Thank You for sharing that driver and led info, I have a zoomie that may use that one mode 4.8A driver.
:beer: :beer:

Cool :slight_smile:

MRsDNF, Just looking over all your posted pics. Such a nice job, I really like that Mastech HY3030e power supply.
Is it a switching or linear and will a switching Power supply do for checking driver setup on bench testing ? :+1:

Lol, they come in all shapes, sizes, flavours and colours dont’ they.

Looks like a mighty improvement for night riding. Safe riding Moose.

Not that either means anything to me it is a Switching PS. One of the best things I’ve bought and had it for along time now.

Really nice design and rock solid custom built lights. :+1:

Thanks Tally-ho. See ya. :blush:

Wow MRsDNF. It looks like a whole lot of careful effort went into these puppies. And it also looks like you can really light up the road. :+1:

I must’ve been absent when you built that light with the copper inserts and slots. I had not seen that one before. It is beautiful.

Thanks Hoop. I look at some of the lights I built and wonder how they ever happened. Must be getting old. Well getting older. :person_facepalming:

Mrsdnf well done , again, and again

I must say they came out unreal.

+ 1 on the Russian making more powerful drivers.

Hi MRsDNF! What amazing skills and attention to details you have! Thank you for sharing your build and posting beam shots. How are your flamethrowers holding up so far? The output is simply amazing and Im very jealous!

Ive long been thinking about a high powered compact lighting system for my touring bike (which has a 70 amp alternator to power all the gizmos Ive added). What is your opinion about the Jaycar lights you once used? Im looking for a great light housing that can disperse 100 watts of heat through an XHP70.2. Do you think the Jaycar would be a good choice for the XHP70.2 conversion? Do the housings have thermal capabilities up to the task of exchanging 100 watts of heat energy (thick floor plate attached to the cooling fins, sufficient mass/surface area, sold robust housing, etc.) What about the beam pattern with the 70.2? Do you like the reflectors? If you’re not sure… no biggie. :wink:

Ive contemplated going with CPU heat sinks with mounted 12 volt fans and elliptical TIR optics to put all the light on the road and guarantee heat transfer from the emitters. But Id have to use epoxy to cobble it all together and make it waterproof. Only the front of the optics would be visible, so it would remain compact and wouldn’t be that noticeable while still looking decent.

Let me know if you’re still interested in a more powerful robust driver solution. I bought some custom linear automotive drivers from a guy on CPF who builds them (I assume he still does). They were about $30-35 USD each as I recall. They are hardened to deal with transient voltage spikes alternators throw off, have voltage protection cut-off set at 15VDC, ramping independent remote thermal protection for both the driver and heat sink, output 13.5A (so theoretically 190.5W at 14.1VDC). Also capable of accepting remote potentiometer leads to adjust output. But because it is a linear driver, its most efficient while ran at max output. Anything less is converted to heat and must be sinked through the FET. Id probably mount the driver in a small cheap aluminum box with the large FET glued to the side to keep it cooled. That, or possibly use a spot on the aluminum bike frame for the FET heat exchanger. This driver with a pair of XHP70.2 emitters on 12V MCPCBS in parallel should be sufficiently bright… but now I need to find the best way to make it happen.

Sheesh! Can I just “barrow” your lights and call it good? :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you for reading!

Thanks FP.
The problem using a housing like the Jaycars is that the led is mounted to the circuit board. If you pull the reflector out everything is in view. The advantage of the housing though is that it it is cast so only has material where you need it so can be made lighter a lot easier than machining from a solid block of metal.
The only issue with the XHP70.2 led in the reflector I used is that there is a slight halo around the very outer edge of the beam. This was noticeable when the lights were first fired up in the shed which I thought would be annoying.
When mounted to the bike I have not noticed this halo at all.
I did try this reflector in my Monster light that had an MTG2 led and it had the same halo but maybe slightly worse. I could not tune this out or modify the bezel to get rid of this unwanted extra light. In the end I put the reflector I originally built the torch with back in.
The Lum reflectors are meant for an XML led so guess that is where the issue is.
Do I like the reflectors? In a torch no. Set up how they are now without noticing the halo effect yes. These are available in 10 degrees as well if you want more flood than throw.
I’m reckoning that these lights are drawing around 36 watts each. The housings themselves are not really getting hot at all and I’d say that 50 watts would be easily achievable if needed. There is a fair amount of mass in these housings. At 100 watts you could run three of these XHP70.2 6 volt leds at about 4.5 amps. That would be a large light.
Your idea for a light sounds interesting. About using a fan for cooling would this only be needed when your at a standstill as when the bike is moving it has air moving over it.
What was the optics you were looking at?
I’m always interested in more power. :smiley: Money is usually the deciding factor though. The Aussie dollar is pretty weak compared to the US dollar so your $35.00 dollar driver would probably be about $60.00 plus shipping. :cry:
With your drivers you could run an army of 12 volt XHP70.2 leds. :+1:
I was contemplating remote mounting my drivers but in the end the lack of room on my bike and the extra wiring involved decided to mount them in the housing of the lights.With the driver parts that needed heat sinking heat sinked directly to their own housing, I’m really happy with how they came together. Just need some shorter days here to get out and really use them in anger.
By all means drop in anytime you like. The kettles is always on these days.
All the best for what eventuates. Make sure to post your creation up. :beer:

Its time for a looooong reply! Im sorry I didnt get back to you right away, but I wanted to get my bike back together with all the mods I recently added to see how well they work. I installed a complete set of LED bulb replacements for my bike, which required a lot of mods and head scratching to make them fit the stock light housings properly. The Honda GL1800 Goldwing isn’t mod friendly while converting the stock H4 halogen bulbs and requires a lot of front end disassembly to even get to them. The factory install uses proprietary parts that only work well with a stock H4 incandescent bulb and have no route for an LED heat path or additional space for wiring and other hardware. Urgh! The bike came stock with (all incandescent) 2 x 55 watt low beams, 2 x 60 watt high beams and 2 x 55 watt fog lights. A while back, we had a new BLF member who created an account just to tell us about some new LED’s that hit the market, and are the only ones made that replicate the filament location and width of the stock incandescent bulbs. He went to great lengths testing them against several others, including destructive tear downs, beam patterns, etc. After reading his extensive comparative reviews, I was convinced. So I purchased 6 for the bike. All I can say is WOW. The amount of light cast is now beyond amazing, AND while retaining the stock beam cut-off and radiation pattern. Rated @6,000 lumens each, Id say they are probably pretty close when considering total losses through the stock light housings. To my eyes, they appear about 2.5 times brighter and with nearly twice the range of the stock halogen bulbs. My bike has a knob to electronically adjust the beam height from the cockpit. So I can adjust the beam up and down while moving (depending on how much weight I load into the saddlebags and trailer) to keep the beam pattern on the road and out of the eyes of oncoming traffic. There are apparently a few other LED conversions on the market that come close in performance and beam control, but because those emitter arrays are not as thin and narrow, and don’t have properly designed light shields built into their mounts, they produce unpredictable results in the various light housings they wind up in. So they typically scatter light everywhere and above the cut-off. :confounded:

I searched and couldn’t find his BLF post, but I did find him on advrider. So… I just tested the Evitek F2 beams two nights ago during a 150 mile night right through twisty mountain roads, and they continuously amazed far above my expectations the entire time. Which says a lot, after being spoiled rotten by all the great flashlights that have been released recently. After this conversion, Im beginning to rethink my needs for mega powered driving lights, but might go ahead some time in the future (just for the hell of it). Snow just began falling in my neck of the woods, so I winterized the bike this morning and put her away for the winter. I just order a set of Evitek F2 LED’s for my Jeep (also a 4 headlight system), which almost guarantees the same stellar results. But these should be an easy direct swap since I have a lot more room to work with. :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1:

For those ordering from the link I just listed in advrider.com, read the entire thread and follow the recommendations of others to email “Cindy” at their company. She speaks great English and has been very responsive to everyone. You can also save a few bucks by going through her and they can build their “Evitek F2” series lights for your bulb base that might not be listed through their aliexpress.com store. I tested the F2 to be a constant current driver design that consistently draws about 34-37 watts through various heat and voltage ranges, has pwm controlled variable speed fans embedded in the housings and comes with a remote driver for each light. For me, the remote drivers caused half of my installation difficulties, while trying to rearrange a myriad of tight fitting wires and inflexible wiring looms in a very complex bike. The drivers are inline to the LED housing, using a rather thick stiff fixed-length cable, so they cant just be mounted anywhere. Honda made sure to use up nearly every available space behind the forward cowls on my bike, so not much room for anything else but a lot of cursing and back peddling to make it all fit properly without screwing up something else.

Onward! Thanks for covering all the details regarding the jaycar housings. After mulling over your comments and the requirements of pushing each emitter to run 100 watts continuous, I think the CPU heat sink + TIR optics might be the best approach, and with minimal installation size. Then the only things Id need to clean are the bugs from the front of the optics! I need to spend more time researching elliptical optics that can withstand the heat and UV generated at those power levels. The ones I came up with initially are the Gaggione LLC59E but they are made from PMMA, so not sure how well they would hold up. Silicone collimators can withstand more heat and UV, so I’ll need to dig a bit further. Assuming quality products, Ive noticed while comparing the same given diameter & beam angle, optics generally require around 30-50% more power to generate the same apparent brightness of a similar sized reflector (the trade-off being a gorgeous even beam pattern vs greater optical efficiency/hot spot with corona). So in the unlikely event that I do come across a compact reflector that can produce a nice even elliptical beam pattern, I might use those instead. Not wanting to mount my lights under the mirrors and sacrifice the great looks of the bike, my only option is to mount them just above the air intake at the front of the bike, forward of the fork tubes. I bought a huge box of used CPU heat sinks a few years ago, and it doesnt look like I will have the room to mount a fan cooled sink after all. But I do have a few chunky large thin/wide flat-sided deeply finned CNC machined aluminum sinks that would be up to the task while the bike is in motion.

Sorry, I forgot about the strength of the AU dollar and outrageous shipping cost from the US. If you’re not yet cracking the 60-70% output capacity of your bikes stator, you might want to think about something like this to push more amps. To test the capabilities of your total charging system in real-world use, maybe you could load your stator and run the bike in neutral with additional lights hooked up temporarily, at say 3000 rpm (or whatever rpm you usually find yourself), and test the target voltage and amps you anticipate while under total electrical load. Then see if you’re below 14 volts @ x rpm to decide if you need a buck or a boost driver (they are available in both buck and boost from ebay, bangood, fasttech, etc). They certainly are cheep enough to play with, and several others have used them successfully in other threads Ive come across. You can also dismount the heat-sink on that particular driver for something more robust if it runs too hot.

Something else: can you add more of the same drivers you’re using now and wire them in parallel to double the output? Might be worth asking. If so, maybe you could switch them independently for high/low. Anyway… just a few thoughts. Can you tell that Im trying to get myself psyched enough to take on another project… after spending months modding my bike and just getting it all back together??? Oh well. Its all part of the fun. At least that’s what everyone tells me! :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, please excuse me. :person_facepalming: Its easy to assume on this forum that everyone always wants or needs more lumens. You may very well already have far more than you will ever need. And darn… those are some really nice looking and functional housings that you’ve fabbed up! Im sure you’re very proud. :sunglasses:

From my CPF days (as I recall), it takes double the wattage for the human eyes to notice a 20% increase in apparent brightness. Through my own testing with a lux meter and pair of DMM’s to measure volts and amps, I derive about the same conclusions. Just one more reason to think about efficiencies vs insanity. :beer:

I’m surprised to hear that a bike the size of the Goldwing is limited in space.
Looks like you have been doing lots of homework. I’ll have a read up on the ADV forum link on the LED lights. The 30/30 watts sounds good.
The SD is limited by room also directly behind the headlight so have to be careful on what replaces the standard H4 globe.
No such thing as to much light in Roo country. The things come out of nowhere.
Reading the letters in a recent Australian Motorcycle News where a reader asked the editor why they do not comment or test headlights. The answer was something like its to dangerous to ride at night because of the Roos. Disgusted I was to put it mildly with SM’s response. Lets just lump all riders into the one basket.
Anyway I have a new little project I’m planning. Using Carlco 10395 optics and hopefully 3 amp drivers with an LED yet to be decided, lots of testing to do to determine which one, hopefully will make a good daytime/low beam compact driving light to replace the standard items.

Im the second owner of my bike. The original owner installed an electronic animal avoidance system that was touted to scare off most animals to prevent vehicles from running them over. It included a control box that fed a small weatherproof speaker mounted to the left front fork tube and was said to produce sound in the ultrasonic frequency range. While the LED indicator did light up when powered on, I had no way of really testing its effectiveness. I did note the darn thing drew close to 40 watts, which is crazy for such a gadget. So I assumed that it must be extremely loud in the ultrasonic frequencies, thus it must be extremely effective. I had 2 close calls of impacting deer crossing directly in front of me, which never happened to me before in such a way. After the second close call, I began to wonder if the gadget was scaring animals into running out in front of me. After several attempts to google information about my particular model, I finally came across a US military report testing around 40 such deterrent gadgets. They tested everything from flashing light systems to passive whistles mounted in the front bumper to active systems (including mine). Also included were high powered lighting systems…. everything from LED to mega powered xenon strobes. Conclusion: everything tested was completely USELESS and did absolutely nothing to help dissuade animals from crossing in front of moving vehicles. I was more than happy to rip that thing off my bike and get rid of the parasitic drain in placed on my alternator! I’ve watched several massive roos on youtube jumping head-first through car windshields at the night. North American large game can do the same thing, and its a terrifying thought striking any animal on a cycle.

I started a 40 x XML2 light bar project about 5 years ago, but gave up when I discovered the need for a complex reflector retention system to hold it all together. To further hinder my plans, I realized 40 reflectors pointing in the same direction would produce one blinding hot spot with no wide angle lighting, thus destroying any peripheral vision. At least with elliptical optics and independent sinks, you could mount them in an arc to simulate a curved light bar.

Im looking forward to your mini-running light set up. :+1:

Very nice lights you made for your motorcycle MRsDNF! They certainly are a huge improvement over the other aftermarket lights and look much better. Must feel good to have made these with your own hands and use them every time you ride at night. Mind if I ask why you chose polycarbonate over glass for the lens?

Thanks NF.

The chosen lens material is what lostheplot had left over from making his driving lights. He cut them out on his home made NC mill for me. Cant get much cheaper than free. :slight_smile: So far they are holding up well even with careful cleaning after every ride.

Not sure glass would be a good option due to there ability to be broken. Not sure about toughened glass.

Agreed, it doesn’t get much better than free and might as well use what you have. :+1:

MRsDNF

I contacted mtolya on ebay (seller of your drivers) and asked about running XHP70.2 on a 12V MCPCB to double the watts (14V * 4.8A). He said it would overheat and fry the driver, even when adding heat sinks to the FETS. Oh well!

Then I inquired about a more powerful driver. He said he’s working on one but doesn’t know when he will have a viable working example. Im not sure if he’s a BLF member so I sent him a link to subscribe. Maybe if you messaged him through ebay and showed your interest in a more powerful driver, he might light the burners. The more the merrier! Those other large buck drivers with the large capacitors posted all over ebay seem to have a lot of ripple and transient voltage spikes, so probably not the best for stator/alternator power. Hopefully our favorite Russian can come through. :beer:

Have you had a chance to play more in the dark with your new setup?