HDB fairing with Vision-X lights

The Highway Dirt Bikes hand guards, handlebar mounts, fairing and Vision-X Optimus Halo LED lights is pretty much done. I still need to finish the wiring for the Oxford heated grips, and mount the bracket for the Garmin Montana GPS.

Funny how the fairing looks bigger in this photo. 

Lens compression from the camera, I suppose. Just the angle.

 

side view

 

Spring flowers in Berlin. 

Definitely need more sun. I've had enough of the gray skies.

Insanely bright LED bulbs for turn signals

I spent a small fortune on some extremely bright blinker bulbs.  They have 18 ultra bright SMD LEDs in a compact package with a BAU15S socket base. I paid an outrageous $25 per bulb. However, none of the other LED bulbs I've ever seen compare in terms of brightness/intensity. These things are nuts.  Hopefully they will help me to be seen on the road.

I bought them here:  Dynamic Motorrad 

Can you guess which side has the 

OEM bulb vs. the new LED bulb??

Shit, these things are bright !

Highway Dirt Bikes DS Rallye Fairing Lite

Been fitting the pieces together and tinkering with a few other things.  No rush since the weather is shitty these days. Slow but steady progress.

I still have yet to decide what I'll do for lights.  As much as I'd like to get a pair of Cylops Optimus Long Range LED lights with Euro beam lens filters, or maybe Rigid D2's, I really don't want to attract the attention of the cops. To that end, I've decided to search for a lighting solution that is compliant with European standards.

One light I'm considering is this one made by Shin Yo. It's a single projector beam light that does double duty as a low and high beam, and it even has the silly parking light built in. Cheap, and I don't expect it produces awesome light...but for farting around the city, it's not likely to get me in trouble with the law. That would leave the other hole in the fairing available for something like a Cyclops -- which I would use when I'm not in the city. Just ideas at this point in time. Still looking.

Orange plastics

I've always liked the bright orange colour of KTM bikes and  I also appreciate the extra visibility it can give when riding in traffic. Since the first 690 Enduro came out in 2008, the colours have been a varied mix of orange, black, and white plastics. You don't get to choose -- the colours change each year. When I decided to buy a 2014 Enduro, I figured I would probably change the plastics from white/black to full orange. And it probably makes sense to do it while the original plastics are still clean and free of scrapes and scuffs. That way, I could sell them for a decent price, or maybe just put them away to swap them back at a later date.

In any event, I ordered up a bunch of pieces at my dealer: front & rear fenders, headlight mask, fork protectors, and the euro LED brake light with mud guard. Total: €227. 

Then a couple of days later, I was browsing a local classified website (Kleinanzeigen) and found an ad from a guy 50 Kms away selling the same parts, more or less, for €200 with shipping. The bonus was that this guy's kit included the old style fender (KTM part #7650801000004) which has a flatter and more angular shape. This particular fender is no longer available to purchase new: it has been superseded by the new, rounder, floppier style fender (KTM part #76508010028). Overall, the used eBay plastics are in very good shape, with only some very minor scuff marks. I'd say condition is 8.5/10.

I happened to have €400 sitting in my PayPal account anyway: last week I sold the aftermarket Fresco carbon fibre mufflers which I removed from the Super Duke before doing the trade-in.

So now it looks like I've got three sets of plastic body panels:
the original whites, the new orange ones, and the used eBay orange ones.

Used plastics from eBay, and new plastics from the dealer.

LED turn signals relocated

I relocated my Watsen Design's LED turn signals. I bought these a couple of years ago for my SV650. They are actually made to fit the turn signal slots of the front fairing on a V-Strom, but they have a pretty generic mounting system, they can be adapted to fit almost anything. They were quite expensive but I do like the fact they are made with top quality craftsmanship, and they're small and extremely bright.

I decided to relocate them because I recently swapped my OEM luggage rack for a Pat Walsh Design rack. Rather than drill holes in the new rack I tried to come up with a more creative mounting solution that would be practical. This is what I ended up with:

Drill a couple of small pilot holes.

Enlarge the pilot holes and drill 2 more small ones for the lock pins.

Use a glue gun to seal the wiring.

Cover it all up with heat shrink tubing for added protection.

Right side installed.

Both installed. Clean and out of the way.

While these suckers may be small, they are extremely

bright... insanely bright.  They are easily visible

on a sunny afternoon.

Here's the link to a previous blog entry which shows how they were mounted with the OEM luggage rack

http://www.fy-yff.com/2010/03/led-lighting.html

Relocating VisionX LED auxiliary lights

Ever since I bought these awesome LED auxilary lights last year I've been trying to find the best way to mount them. I want them to be in the best position to provide maximum lighting, plus I want them to be out of the way and I want the mount to be solid.

My fist attempt was to drill out the holes for the OEM reflectors on the steel brackets that are attached to the lower triple clamp. That was OK, but not quite perfect. Then I decided to buy some special brackets from ProCycle that mount to the same location as the reflector brackets. Those were better, but still not ideal. The main problem with mounting them to the lower triple clamp is that the front fender blocks some of the light. Somewhere in there, I also tried mounting them to the front turn signal brackets: that wasn't bad, but then I didn't have a good place for my front turn signals...a catch-22 indeed.

After taking a good look at the front of the bike to examine all my possible options, it finally came to me. The aluminum hand guards are solid, they're up nice and high, and there is nothing obstructing the view (or the light that would be projected from there). So I drilled a hole in each one to mount the brackets. Problem solved. Now these awesome lights are nice and high, out of the way, aimed a little downward to light up the area directly in front of the bike without offending oncoming traffic, and the mount is very solid.

Not bad, but there's room for improvement.

More solid -- but where to put the turn signals?

OK, this is almost perfect...but the front

fender blocks a little bit of the light.

I think I finally figured this out.

LED lighting

I'm a big fan of LED lighting, but only if they're as bright (or brighter) than OEM filament light bulbs. The fact that they don't give off heat, they power on/off instantly, they last for 100,000 hours, and they consume far less power than conventional lighting...these are all very worthwhile benefits.

You can buy all kinds of LED lighting from any number of places on the InterWeb, inlcuding eBay, but not all LED lights are created equal. Many of the cheap ones are just plain junk: not bright, not well made, etc.  I've purchased from SuperBrightLEDs.com in the past and their products are exactly as they describe. They may not be the cheapest, but their pricing is reasonable. And they offer very cheap shipping ($5 for my entire order, shipped from the US to Canada). And the best part about this store is that if they say they're bright, then in my experience, it's been true. Not the case with some of the crap LEDs I've bought on eBay.

Here's a list of the items I purchased

Now I wanted to try both types of 1157 tail/brake lights -- the high power 18 SMD LED tower, and the 24-LED wide angle cluster (these appear as the 2nd and 7th items on the invoice list above). I knew the high-power 18-LED was very bright because I had one before when I was running the DRZ tail light, but it got ruined after water and road salt got inside the tail light assembly and rusted out the bayonet base of the socket...however, I wanted to compare with the rear-facing 24 LED cluster to see how it would perform. As I expected, the 24-LED cluster isn't as bright...probably because it isn't called "high power" in the name. Bright, but not quite as bright.

 1157 RED 24-LED wide angle cluster

1157 RED high power 18 SMD LED tower

 24-LED wide angle cluster - tail light on

 24-LED wide angle cluster
**tail light
** about as bright as the OEM filament bulb

 24-LED wide angle cluster
**brake light
** hard to tell, but the brake light is slightly
less bright than the OEM filament bulb

and now, the high power 18 SMD LED tower
** tail light only

high power 18 SMD LED tower
**tail light only

**a little brighter than the OEM filament bulb

high power 18 SMD LED tower
**brake light
*** hands down winner for brightness

As I mentioned above, I used to have one of those high power 18 LED bulbs before it got ruined by moisture and salt. Now I've gone back to using the original tail/brake light housing and hopefully it won't leak.

Stay tuned for more LED lighting. You'll notice on the invoice above I also purchased an H4 bulb (just for fun) and some tiny wedge base LEDs for the instrumentation lighting (speedo, neutral, high beam indicator, turn signal indicators).

Oh, while I'm at it, I don't think I ever posted information about my LED turn signals... I didn't care much for the big, bulky OEM turn signals, especially on the rear because every time I would swing my leg over the seat getting on or off the bike, I'd kick the turn signals. So, I found a solution to de-clutter the rear blinkers:

a pair of billet aluminum high power LED turn signals designed to fit in the front fairing of a Suzuki V-Strom. They're made by Watsen Designs. They came with a diode soldered inline, and Suzuki turn signal connectors. How plug-and-play is that?? They're expensive, yes... but extremely well crafted pieces of art. I drilled out the mounting holes on my Suzuki accessory luggage rack and bolted them on. I did snip the wires and lengthen them to reach the connectors under the seat. It wasn't a big deal.

Watsen Design billet LED blinkers for V-Strom

They're tiny, but they're so bright 

they'll burn your retina if you look 

directly into the light.

In search of the ultimate auxilliary lighting solution...

So it's no suprise that the factory DR650 headlight sucks ass. It throws about as much light as a keychain flashlight. In search of improved lighting I replaced the standard halogen bulb with PIAA Exteme White Plus 4,000K H4 bulb. This helped somewhat, but the result is nonetheless the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig: the problem is with the headlight itself -- the reflector & lens are poorly designed. I considered a pair of PIAA compact driving lights (I had a terrific set of PIAA 004XTs on my VW Golf) but since the DR doesn't have a very stout stator, I didn't want to risk overloading the bike's electrical system -- especially since I plan to add heated grips. Running an additional pair of 55 watt lights might strain the weak charging system. So I found a low wattage alternative that, suprisingly, provides more light than halogen driving lights: Solstice Solo S4100 10-watt LED auxilary lights, made by VisionX. They come in 3 beam patterns: flood (wide angle), Euro (medium), spot (narrow). The flood beams don't shoot nearly as far as the spot lights, but they would be far more practical for the purpose I had in mind. I want to leave them on all the time -- partly so that oncoming traffic will see me. But also, since most of my night riding is within the city, I want something that will light the road directly in front of me, not 300 yards ahead. I want to be able to use them in combination with the low beam headlight. But they sure aren't cheap. I found them on Amazon for $120 USD each, plus a few dollars for shipping. Ouch. Totalled up to nearly $300 CDN by the time I had them delivered. But after having a good look at the build quality, and after seeing the light output, I can say that they are worth every penny. And the fact that they only consume 20 watts for the pair is truly a bonus. Believe me, they are bright as hell.