Headlight bulbs...

On or around Sat, 24 Apr 2004 16:41:19 +0000 (UTC), david sillitoe enlightened us thusly:

get some of they phillips vision plus or similar by other manufacturers, nice an bright and standard wattage, so no wiring or legality problems.

The wiring's OK, but you might have trouble with the headlamp switch, I had one melt running 60+55 per side off it.

THe Phillips are excellent - dont waste money on the blue tinted variety porporting to be xenon discharge or similar (often touted on eBay) - the wiring is usually ok - as Austin says the switch will probably suffer and the plugs / connectors on the headlamps may melt like they did on mine.

but the side lamps should only amount to 24W, neglibible compare to the main beams and spots! Better I think to utilise some remote relays and thereby avoid potential conflagation.

and that by wiring the spotlamps

On or around Mon, 26 Apr 2004 12:34:57 +0100, "GbH" enlightened us thusly:

add it all up, you have:

4xsidelamps = 20W 2xmain beam =120W 2x spots =110W

which gives 250W for the vehicle, plus panel lights, etc, so probably about

22A for the vehicle.

the big trailer with it's 8 running lights adds another 40W, which is an additional 3.3A or so.

heat in a resistance varies proportional to I², adding about 15% to the current adds about 32% to the heat produced.

'course, adding the 110W of spots is the main problem, I was just pointing out that the light switch was subject to even more additional load.

summat like 25.3A is what I make it, except that's nominal at 12V nominal, running at probably about 14V, will make the current higher when the engine's running.

anyhow, 25² will be about 625, and the heat produced will vary with resistance, if the contacts in the switch have a resistance of say 0.1 ohm, then the heat will be 62.5W. I doubt they do, in fact have anything like that resistance, normally. Chances are my switch was old and the contacts not as good as they should have been.

So what your saying is I don't have to buy a heater after all then. :-)

(Thinking ahead again)

Lee D

On or around Tue, 27 Apr 2004 01:14:52 +0100, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:

hehe. Actually, that sort of resistance is of the same order as the bulbs, and the switch has to be much less, or you'd get unacceptable voltage drop, and dim lights - try putting 2 bulbs in series to simulate this...

the switch resistance is probably more like 0.001 ohm, if it's in decent condition, but I reckon the original one wasn't in decent condition any more.

still a bit disconcerting when you're driving along and all the lights go out though.

A bit disconcerting!!! It happened to me once on a bike when the main fuse blew with me doing about 60 down a dark lane.

I've only ever been more scared when the same bike threw a rod about a month later at about 80. That's what you get for trying to keep up with a Z1300 and a VF750 on a 250 bored out to 305.

Then why not use relays istead of letting all that current go through the switch creating so much heat?

Use the leads from the switch to operate relays designed to handle currents like that.

Dag

In news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Dag blithered:

Thought I had recommended that few posts back!

RGV250 by any chance? Mine (still a 250) threw a rod at the naughty side of 100mph on the A1, with only just over 7000 miles on the clock... I wasn't on it at the time mind, it was while the previous owner was riding it to my house to sell it to me ;) Thankfully it didn't sieze, and in fact he said when he pulled over to the other side of the road that it was actually still running on the other cylinder. The broken rod had made big holes all over the place though leading to all the coolant pissing out and pretty much writing off the engine.

Long story short, I bought it off him for a lot less than I was going to and had the engine rebuilt into a new crankcase.

Paul

On or around Mon, 03 May 2004 18:02:29 +0200, Dag enlightened us thusly:

'cos I'm an idle so-and-so and it works without.

Nah, nothing as flash as that. It was a Honda CB250RS four stroke single, it was fitted with a Yoshimura big bore kit that took it to 305cc. The little end opened up and the rod went spinning round making three holes, one at the front of the barrel, one at the rear and a gash in the crankcase at the bottom. The last one is the reason I was so scared as the engine oil ended up all over the rear tyre.