With the wet weather at the weekends making it less enjoyable to be outside in the shed working I haven’t done much.
But Saturday morning some T5 LED bulbs I ordered from China turned up. The idea is to replace the 12V 3W filament bulbs with LED in the instrument panels of the bike. They are brighter and require less power to light up the dash, but I wanted to do some tests to prove this.
| Description | Volts | Amps | Watts |
| 12V 1.5W LED | 12 | 0.028 | 0.336 |
| LED in Holder | 12 | 0.029 | 0.348 |
| 12V 5W Filament | 12 | 0.200 | 2.400 |
| Filament in Holder | 12 | 0.198 | 2.376 |
| % Of power | 15% | 15% | |
| Power Saving | 0.169 | 2.088 | |
| If all 6 illuminate | 1.200 | 14.400 | |
| in LED | 0.174 | 2.088 | |
| Saving | 1.026 | 12.310 |
This was gathered with my benchtop power supply, which I checked against my multimeter. I know I ought to do some proper calibration stuff on my kit. I found it interesting that The Amps went up with the LED in the holder vs the Filament in Holder going down. I Suspect a bit of resistance along the wires and connector giving me a slight voltage drop etc. I could go into this deeper and do some actual measurements but not really worth it.
This then starts on the next issue, brightness. The LEDs are rated at 100 lumens and that should be bright enough but the risk is that its too bright.
The camera lies a little as the left icon actually displays quite nicely. But the issue is will it be too bright at night, well indicators I don’t really worry about but the High Beam, well that is another issue. For this test, I locked the camera down to 2000ths of a sec and an iso of 80.
A fix was needed, thankfully I have a pen, a marker pen.
So I test again, LED vs LED with some maker, oh and the Filament bulb just for comparison.
I have never been a fan of really bright main beam indication lights, it kind of ruins the night vision. I will test it to see how it fairs once on the bike. The AMPS/WATTS (75%) saved isn’t suddenly going to transform the bike but I would like to save as many WATTS of power I can so the can be used for other things, like the phone charger and more power to the headlights. Reducing those moments where the bulbs dim as the revs drop especially when you get near a junction. Don’t know what I mean, well lucky you.
EDIT: I still have the B9ES bulbs in the speedo and rev counter to replace and now I can’t remember what colour I ordered. I might do the same experiments with those just as a guide.
The stuff I painted last week are nice and dry but still hanging up as the weather is crap and only a small sighting of blue sky just before darkness descended has left me little enthusiasm to get the next bit done. Though I have had a shipment of Raptor Paint and Tint of red which I plan to use on the crash bars, more on that later.