Thinking about mounting a pair of led lamps on the engine bars, more for daytime visibility than too much night riding if I'm being honest.
Q1) Wiring direct from the battery or add the wire from the ignition (would that affect the warranty?)
Q2) Cheap and cheerful or spend serious cash, given that they're going to be exposed to all the crud/debris from the road so might need replacing in a couple of years?
Morning V I would suggest ebay for a pair of universal lights they're cheap and 99.9%of the time good quality, as for the power take it from the sidelight wires its a lot easier than faffing about with the ignition
Cutting into the wiring will void the warranty. You will probably find if you buy the right set for the bike it is just plug and play. You may be lucky and if you or you know someone who is good with bike electrical systems they can find the plug and then you just plug in and work from there
Good point JP, I thought as much. Fortunately my local Suzuki dealer is very helpful so maybe I will wait until they're open again before doing anything drastic. Hopefully there is a bike specific wiring kit/connector that is plug and play and then I can attach whatever lights I like to it.
Or you could just save your money & all the flaffing around by riding with your headlight on! I honestly cannot understand the logic of auxillary/"daytime running lights" when there is already a position on the lightswitch for sidelights. Especially when DLRs do not even work on the rear of the vehicle, so you`re at just as much risk of being run into from behind because someone hasn`t noticed you. There is also another issue with auxillary lighting in that the brightness of them affects peoples judgement of your speed.
The headlight is on by default any way but the idea is that firstly the bike appears wider and therefore is assumed to be larger and secondly with the LED auxiliaries being brighter than stock headlights appears closer, both of which could make someone less likely to pull out in front of you. Nothing is infallible but surely it can't hurt and it will have the added bonus of lighting up the potholes in the gravel lane that I live on!
I know they are popular but on balance: 1) I prefer my indicators to be visible rather than dazzled out by a pair of spots. 2) with closing speed between 60 & 140mph I'm not convinced dazzling the other driver helps my safety at all, a bit like leaving main beam on. If your going cross country at night I can see they might be useful.
Steve as you know I have them on my yamaha but tend to only use them whem I'm filtering. There not much use for fog as they are to high. If I'm off road at night usually would mean I've gone into that last bend too hot and run out of road and ditch seeing the tree I'm about to headbutt would be the last thing I would think about lol
Thanks for all the input folks. I take the point about dazzling other road users although angling them correctly should help. Living in the sticks I do find lighting up verges with driving lamps in the car helps spot deer etc earlier and some of the pot holes in the lanes are rapidly becoming decidedly unfriendly. On balance I think I'll go ahead but use them judiciously rather than by default.
The 25 quid Chinese ebay CREE mini spots work well. You can tap the feed from the head lamp connector by sliding a wire down the side of the main headlamp plug. No cutting required. Take this wire to a relay via a switch and an in line fuse and the opposite pin of the relay to earth. Tap the high demand side of the relay to the battery via an in line fuse and the opposite side of this on the relay goes to power the lamps.
Hi All, What I do is use the same connector (SAE in my case) as my Optimate lead and plug into that. This has the benefit of having an inline fuse also. Just unplug you Optimate and connect you Fog lights into the lead to the battery. Hope that helps Cheers BTD
BTD the only problem with that is if you get distracted and forget to turn them off you have a dead battery and as most bikes are Injection if the battery is completely dead you can't bump them you will need a jump starter or jump leads and a battery so be careful if you use any battery direct system
I mounted a pair if Chinese led lamps (Ebay cheap as) four years ago..via a relay switched using a feed from the main beam & with a fused independent feed direct from the battery. Transformed night time rural riding..the machine is a Kawasaki klr650 so lights were never great..well worth doing, but if you are going to use them independently switched I think an indicator light is required..
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