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Spooph's take on Travisty's take on flush mount turn signals

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spooph

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Discussion Starter · #1 ·
K, so this is probably almost 3 years in the making now, and I've finally gotten around to it. This is where it started: http://www.newninja.com/forums/f98/my-take-on-flush-mounts-4014.html

First, the fender: Move the license plate to the fender:




Wire LED's together, glue into fender with CA glue - the best stuff ever!


Tape it up with electrical tape to keep reflections down and LED's stuck where they're supposed to be:


Closer look:




All lit up:




Now the body panels:
First make a template out of lexan. It's easy to design and decide on the layout you want to use, instead of accidentally drilling a hole in the wrong place:








Use a punch to put little divots in the body work to make sure your drill doesn't wander. Pre-drill the holes with a thin drill and make sure they are where you want them before bring out the big drill bit.










More continues tonight.... Soldiering and wiring. Hopefully the 250 will have a tail by the end of tonight.
 
Crispy

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#6 ·
Hmmm doing the thing I always wanted to do (except I was thinking of putting the LEDs in the passenger foot peg). Can't wait to see the result!
 
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spooph

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Discussion Starter · #8 ·
K, so can't get the LED's to work with the system with the way I have them wired up, so I ordered some "12V" LED's from Ebay.... FYI: THere is no such thing as a 12V LED.... They are regular LED's with resisters soldiered on...

I was also mistaken in my earlier posts. LED's typically don't run as low as 1.5V, but closer to 1.7 and 2.3V, producing slightly different colors depending on how far from the "optimal" zone it is. The best, cleanest light will be produced at 2V.... Now the waiting game begins...
 
spooph

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Discussion Starter · #12 ·
First attempt, FAILED:

I found these LED's actually not to be 1.5v, but to burn beautifully at 1.9V, all the way up to 2.3V and start to turn reddish above that. They would get dimmer and redder as you approached 3V at which point they would pop almost drawing 5amps before giving up the ghost... This made things difficult for a multitude of reasons: I didn't have an LED flasher relay, so I was trying to make the relay function (requiring a certain amperage), while trying to make the LED's burn correctly. I could EITHER pull enough amps to make the relay work, or to let the LED's burn, but not both, because the relay couldn't get enough juice to make a solid contact to allow the LED's to burn to full brightness.

The problem was compounded because the bike produces about 14V at idle (perfect), but almost 15V above 2,500rpm. With more time and more resistors I could have made this work, but I didn't have the time, and in the end, it would be hack, and I don't like that. With the Resistors I had the only option was to unsoldier everything and add a resistor to each one individually. I had neither the time or desire to do this, so i decided to scrap it and go with pre-resistorized LED's from China.

How did I have it layed out? For the back sides I drilled 3 rows of 7 a piece, yielding ~ 1.7v per LED. Each row I had hooked in series to get to 12V (should have calculated on 14V), and the sides I had 2 rows of 8 LED's in series ~1.5v per LED, not enough to even make them glow. on the sides then I decreased each series row to 7 LED's (1.7v) and put 2 in series with a resistor. Essentially then, I had 6 rows of LED's wired in series, which I then all wired in parallel. I hope that makes sense. If somebody wants, I can draw up a schematic.

Needless to say, it was ugly and hack, and didn't work anyway. It would probably have worked with the LED flasher relay, but I didn't have time to get one (no local auto stores had one in stock - at least not a 2 prong and I wasn't gonna futs the system into a bigger hack state my hacking the relay). Since this is the failed attempt, there is no step-by-step. I'll do that for the much better designed - a copy of Travisty's design. Why did I try and do it this way? To open up some amps in the system. Not because I need them, simply for the idealistic achievement of pursuing effeciency. In other words, just to do it.

Math: In a no-loss system the incandescent turn signal bulbs draw 300mA/piece x 6 = 2.14A total. Why 6 bulbs? There are only 4 turns signals... Ah, but the front turn signals have a second element each which function as running lights, unless I have my motos confused here. For 4 bulbs the energy savings would be: 1.4A total. Watts = Volts x Amps. W=5, V=14. Solve for Amps. K, enough jabbering. Here are some pictures:


















 
Felix

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#13 ·
T

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#14 · (Edited)
Looks fantastic Spooph! Well worth the 3 year wait.:p

Why didn't you go to a LED winker relay? I've had to do that with both bikes and haven't had an issue.:)

I like that you actually took the time to wire them all in correctly.. I lost a bit of motivation and bought LED's with pigtails and just wired them like that. Was tons easier, but I wish I had done what you did. It's much cleaner and more practical.

So, what's the next step/attempt? Different resistors? New relay? Add some incandescents somewhere in line? ;) I know you wouldn't do the last one.. You're not lazy.:D

Edit: Re-read your latest post and saw why you didn't use an LED relay.. Whoops.:) I'll try to pay attention next time rather than just jumping to the piccy's.

I really do admire your design though. I like the forethought to have some side-mounted so that perpendicular traffic can see your anticipated direction of travel. I need to do some customization of my bike before the season starts, and lights for the rear are on the list. I just don't like that I have an integrated running/stop/blink taillight of stock size.. Not enough visibility for me. Hopefully I'll have a thread on here for that little build up!
 
spooph

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Discussion Starter · #16 · (Edited)
K, so the new LED's came in, and the physical bulb was twice as long as the previous LED types which means they stick out from the body work a bit more, but they cost about the same, and I could always shave them down later (luckily the actual light emitting part is very close to the base of the led).

First, I test-mounted an LED to make sure it was going to fit. Turns out these 5mm LED's are actually 5 mm, not 4.5 like the last ones. Which meant I had to re-drill all the holes. Luckily, since all the holes were already where they were supposed to be, opening them up an extra 0.5mm each took only 5 min. You can also see some residue from the liquid electrical tape I used during the first go-around:


Here they are all dry mounted, in the end, I decided not to glue them. With the extra length of the LED's, they are pretty difficult to remove, so it didn't seem as though they'd need glue:


You can see how far they all stick out:


Although not quite as smooth, and a bit more ugly, they are slightly more noticeable, which is kind of the point, so I'm not fussed. OK, what's the backside look like? A mess, that's what:


Some soldierings and the original plug + wires from the stock turn signals:




And some liquid electrical tape to make sure everything is covered. I later also covered this in regular electrical just to provide some more structural support to where the itty-bitty wire comes into the big bundle. I usually use heat-shrink, why not in this case? Because the diameter difference between the two wires is too great for a single piece of heat shrink to shrink to. This is one place where you definitely DO NOT WANT water leaking in. I also didn't want to waste a bunch of heat shrink building the smaller wire's diameter up...



Also, this works with the stock turn-signal relay, which I'm happy about. I will be testing them with the new timed relay, as soon as it comes in, but for now, I'm just happy they work.

And here is video. Sorry, no sound: YouTube - New-gen 2008 Ninja 250 Rear Flushmount turn signals.avi

I now consider this project 50% complete. Up until now I've pretty much just copied Travisty's method. For the front, the last 50% of this project, my idea will come into play, but you'll just have to stay tuned to see that one...
 
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