Auxillary Lights - quick note

[deilenberger]

Got the Hella FF50 driving lights installed. My only problem I can see with them is they may be too bright (if there can be such a thing on a bike..)

I will be using them primarily in daylight to help conspicuity (that and the headlight modulator should awaken even semi-brain-dead cagers..)

A few quick photos - more will be seen eventually on my personal website when I get around to uploading all the photos I took.

Auxillary lights OFF (highbeam on):


Auxillary lights ON (highbeam on):


These were taken in the local graveyard that I always use for light tests. Long straight roadway, with handy granite markers along the right side to see how far I can see. The glowing orb at the end isn't a spirt.. it's a reflective STOP sign.

Front view:


Closeup:


Sideview:


The brackets are pre-release beta ones from LumaLink. The final ones will fit a bit better to the fork legs, and may or may not have the "twist" in the end. Cost at this point is unknown. http://www.lumalink.com/

[deilenberger]

More at: http://www.eilenberger.net/R1200R_Roads ... lights.htm

[rtallent]

Really nice job! They look great and work very well. Helpful write-up too. Thanks.

I've been thinking a lot about adding lighting too and I'm really curious about fork mounting the lights. They must be good in corners, since the light would follow the lean of the bike. My only concern is that I've wondered if it's weird when the light moves up and down with the forks. Is it? I also want them for conspicuity but also for night riding -- I have a lot of deer and a few moose I want to scare away from the road!

[deilenberger]

Really nice job! They look great and work very well. Helpful write-up too. Thanks.

I've been thinking a lot about adding lighting too and I'm really curious about fork mounting the lights. They must be good in corners, since the light would follow the lean of the bike. My only concern is that I've wondered if it's weird when the light moves up and down with the forks. Is it? I also want them for conspicuity but also for night riding -- I have a lot of deer and a few moose I want to scare away from the road!

Actually - some odd things about fork mounted lights:

1 - they turn away from the direction of the turn - remember countersteering? In order for the bike to start a turn, the tire must turn the opposite direction to the turn (except at walking speeds) - so the lights turn that way also. Luckily not by much - once the bike starts the turn and is leaning the tire is pretty much stable and close again to center.

For that reason - I like the fork mounted auxiliary lights to be set wider in spread than the headlight (which has the same turn effect since it's mounted to the steering head also..) Helps to keep some light where we need it in the corners.

2 - the lights don't go up/down any more than the front wheel does. They will change in relationship to you on the bike as the forks work - but they pretty much follow whatever is directly under the front wheel at any instant in time.

They must be satisfactory for a lot of riders - Motolights seems to be doing quite well :-)

Rambling thoughts..
I've had fork mounted lights and fairing mounted lights. I think I prefer fairing mounted lights - but can't think of anyplace to mount them on the Roadster, so gotta make do with what we can do. Had the same FF50's on my R1150RS on a RBR light bar - fairing mounted - great combo, and made for a very clean installation, no problem hiding the wiring.

I spent a bit of time tonight bundling up some wiring behind the headlight with some spiral-wrap wire covering. It would be SO much easier to work in that area if the emissions canister wasn't hogging all the space. I'll be doing some more tidying up - and trying to figure out a better switch location. I disassembled the left switch assembly tonight to see if there is any room in it - and there might be - but major disassembly would be required to get to it. I'm going to continue thinking on this and hopefully some clever idea will occur to me.

And thanks for the compliment - my hope is my scribbling and photos might be of use to someone who is thinking along the same lines - or might be something that gives someone a better idea than I had - and they pass it back to the forum so we can all benefit.

Best,

[Skippy]

Do deer and moose get scared by lights?! I always thought that bright lights atracted animals to roads in the first place.

[deilenberger]

Do deer and moose get scared by lights?! I always thought that bright lights atracted animals to roads in the first place.

Actually - bright lights make them freeze in place - "deer-jacking" was common in souf'NJ for years. "Hunters" (in their minds) would go into the woods at night with a really bright flashlight, and a rifle. They shine the light at the deer, and the deer freeze - making them a really easy target.

There is some evidence that a blinking light (think headlight modulator) scares deer away. My experience backs this up. For years a local club joke was - if you want to see deer jump in front of a bike, ride with Don. It got so I couldn't take a ride without them jumping me.

I added a headlight modulator (for motorists) - and it stopped. Simply stopped entirely. Have been running a modulator for about 10 years - number of deer-jumps - as of today - zero. I have seen deer running away from my bike as I approach them, but haven't had any jump in front of me, or stand frozen in the road.

I started asking around to see if anyone had any idea why.. and found that in Europe, and now parts of the US (including right in my local area) - there are prismatic reflectors being put along the edge of the road in high-deer-strike sections of road, that reflect headlights back into the adjoining woods - strobing the light. The findings were this lessened the incidents of deer strikes where they were in place.

Another friend - who knew an animal behavior specialist asked about this - and why it might be so. The theory is..

Predators - wolves, coyote, etc. when they are looking for a target look without blinking their eyes (bright continuous light) - so deer have learned to freeze if they see a steady bright light to try to blend into the surroundings. When the predator is ready to strike - they blink first - and the target deer take off in the opposite direction.

Theory - yeah, I know... it's just theory. But - my experience has made me very nervous riding if I don't have a modulator going in daylight... and since the modulator won't modulate at night - very cautious about any night riding. The deer population is simply out of control in NJ - my very urban neighborhood is over-run with them..

More than you ever wanted to know probably..

[Skippy]

Very good info, I have noticed the prismatic reflectors over here to on roads. Deer aren't a big problem over here and moose not an issue at all. The modulator seems like a good thing then and could be something very usefull to Rtallent moreso then just aux lights alone.

[NeilS]

I hadn't heard about the blinking, but I have read that predators' vision is much more sensitive to motion than to static images. Cats especially are almost blind when the object is stationary, especially in bright light when the pupils of their eyes form, well, "cat's eyes."

So, Don, while the modulator wards off the deer, do you find that it attracts more dogs, coyotes, wolves, etc.? And would it be a bad idea to ride through Africa with a modulator?

[mogu83]

Not to interrupt the affect of lumens on wildlife.

Thinking about lighting. His anyone tried replacing the H11 in the high beam with an aftermarket bulb. For years I ran a 60/100 watt in my Guzzi with no problems and when I threw on the high beam the road really lit up. There is an 80W H11 out there. An 80W would draw about 2 more amps than a 55W and most likely throw off more heat. Has anyone tried this on a R1200 or any of the Newer BMWs with the plastic headlight.

I usually (have never) run for extended periods of time with the high beam on, useing it only when entering a dark turn or running a twisty section of road.

[NeilS]

One thing I've noticed is that BMW seems to use much thinner wires than those you'd see for the same current load on other cars/bikes. I don't know if it's the insulation that's thinner or the actual conductor size, but that would be a concern to me if I were considering increasing the load on a circuit.

And then there's the CANbus controller. Will increasing the headlight bulb from 55 to 80 watts cause the circuit to shut down? Only one way to find out

[LeonardoNYC]

I ran into this on another board and it seems like as far as headlight modulators go there's a fellow in Florida that's offering advice/schematics for a simple and improved headlight and mirror mounted LED modulator. He lists his email for the information and you can see sample at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKtncjImOA

pay no attention to his "signature" though..I am sure he means no harm!

[deilenberger]

Not to interrupt the affect of lumens on wildlife.

Thinking about lighting. His anyone tried replacing the H11 in the high beam with an aftermarket bulb. For years I ran a 60/100 watt in my Guzzi with no problems and when I threw on the high beam the road really lit up. There is an 80W H11 out there. An 80W would draw about 2 more amps than a 55W and most likely throw off more heat. Has anyone tried this on a R1200 or any of the Newer BMWs with the plastic headlight.

I usually (have never) run for extended periods of time with the high beam on, useing it only when entering a dark turn or running a twisty section of road.

I wouldn't recommend it. BMW is notorious for using wiring "just big enough" - and I bet the CANBUS would turn off any bulb that draws significantly more Amps - seeing it as a short circuit..

I think the other problem will be finding a higher-wattage H11 bulb that actually puts out more usable light (I did a rather extensive series of tests on bulbs - primarily 9005/9007 bulbs - very similar to H11 bulbs for the BMW Car Club of America magazine)..

A quick search turns up: http://www.rallylights.com/hella/H11.asp, and aside from the 80W "blue" bulb - all of them put out less light (lumens) than a stock H11. This isn't too surprising since I found the same thing testing 9005/9007 bulbs.

Most aftermarket bulbs are colored blue (not a good thing actually for seeing at night) to appeal to the bling crowd (usually Japanese car enthusiasts trying to emulate HID headlights.) ALL the bulbs I tested that were "blue" had some kind of coating on them that absorbed light - and put out less light than the normal halogen bulbs - even when they claimed higher Wattage (which frequently wasn't true - I measured the Wattage they consumed.)

We could go into a long discussion on why blue isn't better - at best it may be equal - but if you are really interested, I'd suggest reading Daniel Stern's writeup on it..

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech ... /blue.html

And his take on the PIAA Superwhites (which I measured - and they didn't put out any more light than the standard halogen 9005 bulb):

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech ... white.html

There were several euro only bulbs available that I tested (see http://www.powerbulbs.com ) the Philips VisionPlus and the Osram Silverstar that actually put out measurably more light than the same stock bulb (between 20-30%), and these consume the same wattage. They do this at the expense of a shorter life by burning a hotter filament. Unfortunately (I had these in my K75S and they were very good) - they don't come in an H11.

My WAG - this route is a dead end.

My personal opinion - auxiliary lights are the way to go - besides providing more light - they provide a redundant source - if the headlight fails, auxiliary lights on a separate circuit won't.

Just a FWIW - the stock H11 bulb is rated at 1200 Lumens. The HB3 bulbs used in the Hella FF50 lights is rated at 1700 Lumens. Since the stock headlight runs only one bulb on lowbeam - the addition of the 2 Hella lights results in roughly 3x additional light. Running the stock headlight on highbeam where both bulbs are run - results in still more than 2x in additional light. No way any aftermarket bulb will provide that performance unless you go to an HID adaptation kit, which has other problems such as bulky ballasts and incompatibility with the FZE body module on the bike.