Update, Lights, Horn, 12 Volt Solution

[duivendyk]

90 Watt, or over 0.1 hp! seems rather extravagant to me for an MB,I have to say.You had certainly set yourself a very difficult task if you had planned to come up with a cost effective and manufacturable device,that people would be willing to buy, unless there existed a broader application,I would think.

 

[HoughMade]

Hey if you have a self-sustaining power supply that makes 90 watts- more power to you.

My full lighting system (front/rear turn, headlight, brake, tail) works off of one 7ah 12 volt battery and lasts longer than my rear does, so I am satisfied.

 

[machiasmort]

90 watts is a pretty strong system.

I hooked up a couple leds to the white wire. I've got 2 behind a reflector for a headlight and 1 red LED out of a Mercedes tailight as such. The headlight is a moddified bike light. If there's interest here, I'll post more on it. In the meantime when I get a chance I'll take a pic at night.

By the way, necessity is the mother of invention. It gives me perfect reason to have that motor running when I get stopped in the gustopo state (here). I want to be SAFE!!!

 

[cabinfever1977]

it dont matter in most states anyway as long as the lights can be see around 300 feet away. but in the states where mb's are not legal you can use any lights that you feel like using.

 

[duivendyk]

MM,LED's don't necessarily take kindly to ac which is what is coming out of the WW!,it's not that they don't work but they could get zapped by excessive reverse voltage.If you have the two headlight ones in series and they light up with a negative dc voltage applied you've hit it right (you've prob. lucked out).Is that Mercedes job a single LED or a few connected in series and are all of them connected in series across the WW to ground (black wire) or what?

 

[Deleted Member 4613]

Although LED is satisfactory for rear lamps, stop light, turn signals, it is not satisfactory for a head lamp, which needs to be very bright to illuminate the field in front. Leds quickly lose their lumens and focus with distance, so they are unsafe for a headlamp. We used a halogen for the headlamp and leds for the rest. The law here (Illinois) does allow lights that are visible at 500 feet which an LED can do. My effort was to make a completely street legal motorized bicycle, at least that was the objective until the state of Illinois denied registration and plates so I could legally ride any road/street in Illinois.

 

[duivendyk]

You don't lose 'lumens' with distance, wether from an LED or an incandescent bulb,that is nonsense,you might lose focus depending on the reflector design,so the beam is spread out more or less,reducing the light intensity (Lumens/metersquared).Again there is no inherent difference.Photons are photons ,the only difference is that LED's like sodium lights tend to be more monochromatic,that is the light emitted occupies a narrower spectrum,but that does not affect their effectiveness as vehicular lights,provided they match the spectral sensitivity of the human eye.An infrared LED would not do obviously.LED are still a lot more expensive than incandescents for the same light output,but last much longer and are far more efficient.Thus, if efficiency is of prime importance like in MB's their application makes a great deal of sense.

 

[machiasmort]

MM,LED's don't necessarily take kindly to ac which is what is coming out of the WW!,it's not that they don't work but they could get zapped by excessive reverse voltage.If you have the two headlight ones in series and they light up with a negative dc voltage applied you've hit it right (you've prob. lucked out).Is that Mercedes job a single LED or a few connected in series and are all of them connected in series across the WW to ground (black wire) or what?

Yup, they are wired in series (in laymens terms) they are daisy chained pos to pos on 1st LED, Neg of 1st LED to pos of 2nd LED Neg of 2nd to pos of Brake LED Neg of brake to chassey ground.

I didn't think AC/DC mattered w/LED's. I thought it was more of a don't exceed the volatge deal?

Either way, the project started when I bought a BELL light/tail light combo. I tried getting into or burnt the power switch, or something. Messing arround I discovered the circut that controlled the LED's was still good. The headlight had 3 bulbs, 1 incandescent and 2 led. I deep sixed the incandescent and used the 2 LED's in their original spots. I soldered the white wire right to the circut board that had the micro resistor in it. From there I modified the plastic tail bezzel to hold the 4 pin single Mercedes (red) LED.

I freely admit that the 2 LED headlight leaves a little to be desired but if your intent on the road you can still ride with it. It's not something to kick back and hold WFO on a pitch black Country road, but it'll get ya home and make sure your seen by non text messaging, cellphone talking, mirror gazing cagers!

 

[duivendyk]

I think you lucked out MM,it so happens that the WW ac output is unsymmetrcal,that is the positive excursion is about 1/3 of the negative one (+7/-20V depending on speed).The negative breakdown voltage is typically in the 3 V range (per LED) so you should be OK.Daisy chaining them is the right way to hook them up,that is sharing the current.Of course then the higher output(current) ones are not putting out the amount of light they are capable of.You cannot put them in parallel esp,if they are not identical,one tends to hog the current while the others get starved.If identical you might get away with it (sometimes).It's necessary to heatsink (the higher powered ones), at higher temps. the light output can decrease substantially.

 

[Deleted Member 4613]

Again, LEDs are good enough for all other lighting except the headlamp. We found no LED headlamp that was bright enough or intense enough to light the field in front. Light from an LED tends to quickly lose focus and intensity with distance. It requires an appreciable number of watts to accomplish good headlight intensity, and the halogen headlamp does the trick. There are LED flashlights with as many as 100 LEDs but they just can't match a halogen headlight.