As I like to ride early in the morning before dawn, to avoid the heavy traffic where I live, I’ve added a complete lighting system to my bike. The tail light, brake light and turn signals were of little problem but the headlight posed some issues. I started with a 5AH AGM and a 20W MR16 spot bulb that I felt was inadequate for the speeds I ride. I upgraded to a 35W driving light using the H3 halogen lamp, while better I still wanted more light. I added an additional 7AH AGM and went to a 55W H3 bulb and that did the trick. Problem was that the 55W was a battery hog, using 40% battery capacity as a lowest point, the system gave me about 84 minutes of ride time with the headlight on. On my usual Sunday morning run, I would run the headlight about 30 minutes and 30 minutes with just the parking lights and that would pull the battery down to 70%. I wanted a more efficient system.
I looked into LED’s but found the lumen output to be only a little over ½ the output of the halogen even though the bulbs were stated to be “equivalent”. Yesterday while puttering around the house, it suddenly occurred to me that I had almost everything I needed to add a second driving light and run a high and low beam. The upper light (low beam) uses a 35W and the lower light (high beam) uses a 55W bulb. I added a SPDT switch to my control box as a dimmer switch. I headed out at 5am this morning and only used my high beam for a few minutes as the road was well lit. When I got to the normally darkest part of my route, dawn was breaking so I stayed with the low beam and just ran the parking lights back home. I checked the battery and found it was at 90% full charge. Running the system with only the 35W, when possible, should yield about 123 minutes of run time. Not bad for an afternoons work.
I looked into LED’s but found the lumen output to be only a little over ½ the output of the halogen even though the bulbs were stated to be “equivalent”. Yesterday while puttering around the house, it suddenly occurred to me that I had almost everything I needed to add a second driving light and run a high and low beam. The upper light (low beam) uses a 35W and the lower light (high beam) uses a 55W bulb. I added a SPDT switch to my control box as a dimmer switch. I headed out at 5am this morning and only used my high beam for a few minutes as the road was well lit. When I got to the normally darkest part of my route, dawn was breaking so I stayed with the low beam and just ran the parking lights back home. I checked the battery and found it was at 90% full charge. Running the system with only the 35W, when possible, should yield about 123 minutes of run time. Not bad for an afternoons work.
