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Banshee Electrical and Lighting Upgrade Stage 2 - Lighting Upgrade - Page 1 |
Now that we have a 200 watt stator and a battery installed it's time to put all that new-found electrical power to good use. For this project we need to do a little bit of math. We have 200 watts of power to work with and a regulator/rectifier that is rated at 18 amps. This 200 watts has to run our headlights, tail/brake lights, a whip flag light (coming soon) and don't forget it also has to charge the battery. Does this mean we can have 200 watts of lights? Not really because of the loads required to charge the battery and run the tail/brake/flag light. But it does mean we can have a LOT more light than stock. For this project I am going to run 2 Trail Tech lights at 37 watts each (74 Watts) and 2 Hella 500 lights rated at 55 Watts each (110 Watts) PLUS an LED tail/brake light (maybe 2 watts???) and a whip flag light (3 watts max). Add that up and I am drawing 189 Watts JUST in lighting. That's pushing the limits of the stator and regulator/rectifier as it is and I STILL need to charge the battery which can take anywhere from about 15 to 120 watts depending on the state of the battery. In order to cut the power consumption I am going to install 35 watt H3 bulbs in the Hellas instead of the 55 watt bulbs it comes with. This will bring my lighting power consumption down to 149 watts which is about the max I would recommend running with a battery conversion. |
Let's start with something simple - changing out the stock 1157 (Banshees with brake light) or 1156 (Banshees without brake light) incandescent bulb with an LED replacement. The LED light probably draws only 2 watts or so. A stock 1157 bulb draws 5 watts or a whopping 21 watts when the brakes are on. Only problem is that a regular incandescant 1175 bulb is a lot brighter than an LED version as you will see on the next page. |
First upgrade for lighting is going to be installing a set of Hella 500 lights in place of the stock lights. The Hellas I used are DRIVING lights which project a long distance but don't light off to the sides very well. Hella also makes the same light in a FOG light pattern which doesn't project very far out but lights directly in front and off to the sides very well. I wouldn't want JUST driving or JUST fog lights. Since I am adding a set of Trail Tech handlebar mounted lights for up close lighting I decided to go with the driving lights for the long-range vision they provide. |
Here's how I chose to mount the lights. How does it hold up? So far, so good - when field testing the set-up I rode some pretty rough terrain and and everything held up fine... so far , but I'm a little concerned about the long term durability of the hose clamps. Basically, I utilized the stock rubber bushings and mounts and used a hose clamp to clamp the Hella lights around that. I chose this method so that I would get the vibration isolation from the stock rubber bushings and for ease of install. If this doesn't prove to be solid and reliable I will have to hard mount the lights to the bracket somehow. We'll see... |
I added some Trail Tech lights. This shows what you get in the kit: Handlebar clamp and allen head bolts, lights, and some OEM style crimp connectors. Installation is pretty simple so I'm not going to go into that except to say that I chose to wire mine to the high beam position of the stock light switch. |
The Trail Tech lights as well as all others like it use a standard MR16 bulbs. I replaced the 10° spot and 35° flood bulbs that came with the Trail Tech kit with better Sylvania Tru-Aim IR 10° narrow spot bulbs (You'll have to get them on-line as I haven't seen these in any store). I also got a 25° narrow flood and it has a nice pattern too - tough call between the 10° and 25° bulbs but I settled on 10° since it wastes light lighting up the air and it gives me a litle more reach. If you do slower riding and/or want to light up the sides more then a 25° narrow flood would be a good choice but I wouldn't go any more than that. The IR series of bulbs are supposed to produce more light for a given wattage as well as have a much better reflector. It's hard to tell if the light output is higher without a light meter but I can say the beam patter is much better and well defined. For about $9 each I consider these bulbs worthwhile for just the better beam pattern alone. I'll keep the stock bulbs as spares. In the pictures of the bulbs above the left bulb is the standard bulb and the right is the IR bulb. |
Ok, maybe this is overkill :) but I wanted some low wattage lighting when parked at night and I happened to have a 20 watt amber colored fog light laying around. I mounted this right under the stock bumper and wired it to the low beam position of the stock lighting switch. It's bright enough to light up a decent size area when parked or find your way around at night when you don't want to blind people such as in camp. It may be a little cheesey but I like having it. |
Here is a close-up of the front of the Trail Tech light assembly. The toggle switch with the red and white wires connected to it is to control the Hella lights. The stock light switch controls the small fog light on low beam and the Trail Tech lights on high beam. |
And finally, I added a whip flag light power connector. DC Positive comes in on the green wire and DC Negative is chassis ground. I just bought the plug and socket at Radio Shack and fabricated a small L bracket to hold the socket. Time to see how well these lights work on the next page.... |
