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Old October 12th, 2018, 07:30 AM   #1
greg737
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Anyone with Long-term experience with LED headlight from Superbrightleds?

History: For a while now I've been little concerned/bothered about the total draw of Amps/Watts on my '05 EX250 FI project bike's electrical system. At idle the voltmeter (aftermarket Datel) would show as low as 13.0 volts (maybe even into the high 12.0 volts range).

So, I ordered and installed a motorcycle LED headlight offered by the Superbrightleds company. It's the version that has the H4 plug (correct plug type for the EX250) that throws 2000 lumens, fanless (heat-sink only) design.

https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...ens/3930/8566/

When it came in the mail I took a moment before installing the LED headlight to do a quick side-by-side comparison multimeter test of the amp draw of both the original incandescent bulb and the new LED bulb. The incandescent bulb draws 4.6 amps and the LED bulb draws 1.6 amps.

So that's 3 amps of savings (and who knows how many watts), which is great.

Install was very quick and easy, everything fit just perfectly (required a small amount of trimming of the rubber rear headlight cover). I've ridden it twice at night and the amount of light the LED throws seems better than OEM in both low and high beams. And most important, the voltmeter never indicates less than 14.0 volts.

The question is: Anybody out there with long-term experience on their EX250 with this exact LED headlight from Superbrightleds? Long-term performance? Problems? Opinions? Gripes?
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Old October 12th, 2018, 08:39 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by greg737 View Post
So that's 3 amps of savings (and who knows how many watts), which is great.
volts x amps = watts

I recently got a couple similar one, but not that one. The actual LED emitter looks the same, but the rest is a different design. Superbright has a good reputation for customer service.
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Old October 12th, 2018, 08:51 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Triple Jim View Post
volts x amps = watts

I recently got a couple similar one, but not that one. The actual LED emitter looks the same, but the rest is a different design. Superbright has a good reputation for customer service.
Thanks Jim, I was being lazy not looking up the math for the DC current conversion from Amps to Watts.

The LED Headlight savings looks even more impressive when you view it in Watts rather than Amperage draw. Depending on the DC system voltage the bike's alternator and R/R are able to deliver, somewhere between 12 and 14 volts, the savings of running the LED headlight is 36 to 42 Watts.
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Old October 12th, 2018, 09:11 AM   #4
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That looks like a decent bulb.

I have an older type with a fan that's been in about 3 years now.

My bike ('06 SV650n) has had issues with overheating wiring connectors and the H4 plug, so the lower draw of the LED helped that issue as well as throwing out more light than even a high output conventional SilverStar bulb I was using.

Because of the way the LEDs are arranged, you do get a break in the pattern down the middle, but the increased output pretty much overcomes that. I wish they made a H4 bulb with a complete 360 degree output like a conventional bulb. When I bought mine the photo showed something like that, but when it arrived it was the standard type (left and right emitters).

One other benefit is the low beam stays on when the high beam comes on, unlike a conventional bulb.
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Old October 12th, 2018, 01:05 PM   #5
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While I was doing the headlight work I decided to see what the electrical draw of the instrument panel lighting was.

The EX250 has three "wedge type" bulbs that light the instrument panel, when I tested the amperage draw of one I got .22 of an amp which means all three bulbs together are drawing .66 amp (or about 9 watts total).

I ordered replacement LEDs for the instrument lights. The replacement LED bulbs run at .04 amps, so the total for all three would be .12 amps (or about 2 watts total).

The electrical "savings" of swapping these three bulbs to LED would be about 7 watts. This amount added together with the 42 (roughly speaking) watts saved on the LED headlight conversion brings the total to almost 50 watts.

As I mentioned earlier in the original post, this electrical system saving has made my FI system stable whenever the engine drops to idle, the system voltage now stays as 14.0 volts and the items that depend on good, stable voltage, like the fuel pump and the wide band O2 sensor system are working better now.

Plus the original incandescent bulbs in my instrument panel were dim (they were 13 years old and had sort of a "cooked" look to them, so I it wasn't surprising that they were dim). Now the instrument panel lighting is brighter (probably back up to what it was when the bike was new).
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Old October 12th, 2018, 01:23 PM   #6
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Do you have a number for the LED replacements for the "wedge type" bulbs?

Did you get them from Superbrightleds.com also?

The bike of mine that really needs LED replacement headlight bulbs is my '00 Derbi GPR as in my Avatar. The dual headlights are super dim, even on high, and you can see the RPMs drop at idle when you turn them on. They are some bizarre bulb that I've never seen before.
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Old October 12th, 2018, 01:36 PM   #7
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Yes, ordered them through Superbrightleds

For the 3 instrument panel lights: 194-WWHP5: Warm White, $4.95 each

Didn't mention it yet but decided to also do the 4 tiny "function" lights: Neutral, Headlight Bright, Turn Signal Indicator and Oil. At Superbrightleds these tiny lights were listed as: 24-WHP: Cool White, $2.49 each

I chose "warm white" for the main instrument panel LED lights because I wanted their effect to be very similar to the original incandescent bulb light. I chose "cool white" (which is a harsh daylight white) for the tiny little function lights because they're placed behind colored lenses and I figured it would give a more vibrant color.
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Old October 12th, 2018, 02:00 PM   #8
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Quote:
The bike of mine that really needs LED replacement headlight bulbs is my '00 Derbi GPR as in my Avatar. The dual headlights are super dim, even on high, and you can see the RPMs drop at idle when you turn them on. They are some bizarre bulb that I've never seen before.
The Superbrightleds website seems to have a replacement for every imaginable bulb. If there's a marking on the bulb itself or a specification/designation listed in the bike's Service Manual I'd bet that the Superbrightleds website will have an LED equivalent (i.e. both in lumens and in fitment of the base of the bulb into bulb holder in the bike's wiring harness).
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Old October 13th, 2018, 06:36 AM   #9
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My only suggestion is to keep a spare in the garage if you're worried about it. I run aftermarket bixenon projectors and HID bulbs/ballasts in my DD car, and having a spare bulb, ignitor, and ballast on the shelf has proven itself to be a life saver. You'll likely be fine, but there's always that worry.

If you're worried about amp draw at start up, you can always install a short delay timer on the headlight circuit to help further with getting a strong stable idle before firing the headlight. Probably not necessary for LED, but it's one more way you could potentially help your FI setup if needed. I seem to remember your setup being a strong starter though and likely not needing more amps at start up and first idle.
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Old October 13th, 2018, 07:05 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by choneofakind View Post
My only suggestion is to keep a spare in the garage if you're worried about it. I run aftermarket bixenon projectors and HID bulbs/ballasts in my DD car, and having a spare bulb, ignitor, and ballast on the shelf has proven itself to be a life saver. You'll likely be fine, but there's always that worry.

If you're worried about amp draw at start up, you can always install a short delay timer on the headlight circuit to help further with getting a strong stable idle before firing the headlight. Probably not necessary for LED, but it's one more way you could potentially help your FI setup if needed. I seem to remember your setup being a strong starter though and likely not needing more amps at start up and first idle.
Good to hear from you, CH. Funny how much time has passed, you and I are now among the long-term members of the forum.

Your memory is accurate, in its original FI configuration the bike didn't have idle-engine-speed power issues.

But this past Spring and Summer I went through the entire bike refurbishing and upgrading it to a better standard. I haven't figured out why yet, but after this re-work the bike would idle at a lower voltage than it did before.

Maybe the cause was that I replaced the '05 alternator rotor with an alternator rotor from a '13 year model. I did this to get the "24 minus 1" ignition control tooth pattern that's on the outside of the later (factory fuel injected) EX300 alternator rotor. So maybe the '13 year model rotor isn't perfectly compatible with the '05 year model stator.

But it sure did seem like a perfect swap, all the dimensional measurements were spot-on and I've done all the Multimeter tests to confirm that the alternator is putting out good AC current. It seems to be doing fine: about 19 volts AC at idle on all three phases and about 60 volts AC at 5,000 RPM.

Also, I replaced the OEM Regulator/Rectifier with an upgrade to a modern MOSFET type and this new R/R also tests out just fine.

So that leaves the possibility there's some component in the newly upgraded FI system that's overly "power hungry" for some reason. I haven't taken the time yet to Multimeter test the Amperage-draw of each individual fuse position in the bike's added-on FI fuse box.

Maybe I'll get around to doing that this winter when the weather gets cold and riding season ends, but for now the bike runs great with the reduced electrical load thanks to the LED lights.
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Old October 13th, 2018, 09:53 PM   #11
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Which wideband do you have? Where did you place the bung?
Heater circuits for those things can be pretty power-hungry.
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Old October 13th, 2018, 10:20 PM   #12
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Which wideband do you have? Where did you place the bung?
Heater circuits for those things can be pretty power-hungry.
The sensor itself is a Bosch, the sensor controller is an Innovate Motorsports LC-1. And your thought is interesting, but when the sensor controller is heating up the O2 sensor the air/fuel ratio display on my instrument panel blinks, which it does every time I key-switch the bike to "ON" prior to starting the bike up.

If the heater circuit is kicking back into operation at idle I'm guessing the display would flash then too, but I'll re-read through the literature to see if that's true.

The bike has an AreaP header system and the O2 sensor is located at the Y where the 2 headers join into 1 (pretty much the first point where it would have access to exhaust gas from both cylinders). The Innovate Motorsports people reviewed my location when I was building the system (back in 2010) and they thought the location was good: not too close to the exhaust ports - not too far away.
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Old October 19th, 2018, 08:53 AM   #13
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Under the heading of "things I didn't know about the EX250", the following situation...

I knew when I replaced the Turn Signal bulbs with LED bulbs that I would also have to replace the Turn Signal Flasher-Relay because the original relay wouldn't be compatible with the low-amperage nature of the LED bulbs, which results in the notorious "fast flash" effect.

So when I made my original order from Superbrightleds.com I also ordered their plug-n-play "Flasher Relay for LED". It comes with a plug that matches the original plug on the EX250 wiring harness.

When I installed the LED bulbs and flasher relay it went exactly to plan, the turn signals blink at the proper rate and the turn signal bulbs are brighter than original.

The unexpected problem was that the instrument panel turn signal indicator light stopped working. I discovered that the wiring harness inputs to the instrument panel turn bulb (surprisingly it's just a single bulb that's supposed to flash the same for either right or left turn indication) don't have a true, dedicated path-to-ground. Instead the bulb gets its power through the side of the turn signals that are being used and its grounding path is through whichever turn signals are not being used, and this is a very long, indirect path-to-ground. The new LED bulb I put in the instrument panel didn't like this situation at all.

So I simply added a second LED bulb into the turn signal indicator position on the instrument panel (a tight fit in the existing space behind the green turn signal lens, but it works). This allowed me to have a dedicated bulb for each side (one bulb for left turns, one bulb for right turns) with proper/normal wiring. The result is very good.
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Old October 19th, 2018, 09:18 AM   #14
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Originally Posted by greg737 View Post
Instead the bulb gets its power through the side of the turn signals that are being used and its grounding path is through whichever turn signals are not being used, and this is a very long, indirect path-to-ground. The new LED bulb I put in the instrument panel didn't like this situation at all.
This is a trick to get a single indicator bulb to work with both L and R signals with a minimum number of components. The indicator light gets power to one of its terminals when a turn signal light is powered. Its other terminal, being connected to the other turn signal bulb, is effectively grounded through that bulb filament. The indicator filament is small, so it gets most of the voltage drop, and lights. The unpowered signal bulb gets such a small current through it that it doesn't light.

The reason an LED indicator doesn't like that system is that the current through it reverses depending on which turn signal you're using. This means the LED indicator will light only one way (L or R) but not the other. On top of that, if you're using LED signals, in one direction the non-powered LED will probably light partially from the current going through it.

One cure is documented in various places, and involves grounding one side of the indicator bulb, and powering the other side with two small, cheap diodes, one from the L bulb's power and one from the R bulb's power. The two diodes isolate the L and R power and cure the odd behavior. This is the method I used on my 250.

Last futzed with by Triple Jim; October 19th, 2018 at 11:28 AM.
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Old October 19th, 2018, 09:25 AM   #15
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The reason an LED indicator doesn't like that system is that the current through it reverses depending on which turn signal you're using. This means the LED indicator will light only one way (L or R) but not the other. On top of that, in one directions the non-powered signal bulb will probably light partially from the current going through it.

One cure is documented in various places, and involves grounding one side of the indicator bulb, and powering the other side with two small, cheap diodes, one from the L bulb's power and one from the R bulb's power. The two diodes isolate the L and R power and cure the odd behavior. This is the method I used on my 250.
Oh wow, using diodes! That is a very elegant and simple "one-bulb" solution. It demonstrates a better understanding of electronics than I have. In spite of how simple it is I never would have come up with that solution. I'm a knuckle-dragging caveman when it comes to electrical items.

So yeah, I killed that butterfly with a hammer.
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Old October 19th, 2018, 11:29 AM   #16
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There's nothing wrong with your solution, Greg.
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Old December 25th, 2018, 06:12 PM   #17
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Sorry about the late entry here.
I started using that H4 replacement headlight bulb in my 2014 Royal Enfield Continental GT. It’s doing fine. I was able to get all my wiring stuffed into the headlight nacelle.
I may still fiddle with the aim of the light. The bright mode shoots all over the place, I may lower it.
Cheers,
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Old December 25th, 2018, 08:02 PM   #18
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Yeah, due to difference in placement and size of LED element compared to incandescent filament, there will be larger amounts of stray light.

Only LED bulb I know that accurately mimics filament and doesn't cause extra stray reflections is the Philips X-treme Ultinon bulb. This was from Daniel Stern's (god of lights) testing couple years ago. So there may be others on market now.
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