Lighting thread.

rezrider

rezrider

cleonard:
As far as I'm concerned stock dirt bike lights are only good for getting back to the truck in second gear if the sun goes down. I've done over 200 miles of high speed desert riding in a single night. That doesn't happen on a 25 watt headlight.
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As they would say in the industry... "you'll out run your light"! :prof:
 
cleonard

cleonard

CDA:
I like the BD Squadron setup...3600 lumens..:drool: My year bike though will need a stator upgrade to run it, so I am looking into it, but not on the list right now.
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3600 lumens? It's a decent start. The HID retrofit is good for about 2900 quick and easy lumens. I had about somewhere between 4000 and 4500 on my old XR.

Do you really need a stator or do you just need the float the ground and a DC reg so all the lighting power is DC. Beta uses the KTM style electrical system so I just did that well known mod.

The best current LED's are just over 100 lumens per watt. HID a little less at 85 or so. Halogen is 27 and those wonderful 25 or 35 watt incandescent's are a wimpy 20 lumens per watt. That BD light should only need 35 to 40 watts. Most bikes with any kind of stock lighting can power that.

After 3000+ lumens on the bike it's time fro a helmet light.
 
J

johnrunner

The stock simple look and yet impressive throw of the Squadron is nice! :rocker:

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J

johnrunner

TurtleShifter:
I think a good helmet light is a almost a must have as the fixed point of the headlight bounces around at least your helmet light lights up where your looking:noidea:
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Very true. A helmet light is a must. My bro and I duct tape bright flashlights to the side of helmets and called it a night last time :smirk: It's almost as important as the main bike light as it allows you to see where you head is turned.
 
cleonard

cleonard

A lot depends on what you are trying to do. Blasting 60+ down a desert road requires something very different than singletrack. One needs narrow focusing. HID still rules here. Those expensive Trailtech lights mentioned earlier by Ken are HID and cone in a very narrow focus that LED can't match. They are really nice. LED is catching up though and tend to work better on the slower trails. I've done the LPNF trails and they are great at night. To me less focused light works well as you can't usually see farther than 100 feet anyhow.

Those eBay LEDs over state the light a lot. Most of these use the Cree XM-L led. At best it can do about 1000 lumens at maximum drive. It takes good cooling and precise circuitry to do that, and those cheap lights have neither. Lights also have losses. Most real world results will have more like 700 lumens per XM-L led at best. That eBay light above is more like 2000 lumens. Still a lot of light though since most stock bikes are more like 400 lumens.

While the less expensive light can work well there is a big difference in build quality. The BD and TT stuff is well made, but you pay big time for it.

I've learned that redundancy is a good thing to have while riding at night. I've had a few failures over the years and I was glad that I had backups.

Even a $15 cheap XM-L flashlight and some tape can get give you surprising results.
 
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