- Joined
- Oct 2, 2013
- Messages
- 140
After many question which you have indulgently answered, I hope I can contribute something to those of you who might be considering converting your Commando lighting to LEDs. Two things to begin: I'm not an 'electronics guy', just a tinkerer, and this is a work in progress; secondly a loud shout out to Jean in Montreal who inspired much of this, who answered my questions, and whose work and inspiration I have simply played with. My bike has positive ground and LEDs are polar-specific, so take care......
There's a minefield of LEDs out there, from very bright to very dim, and from cheap to expensive. I barely know my lumens from my amperages, so did a lot of reading and eventually settled on a 5 metre strip of 5050 soft white LEDs which I found on eBay here http://www.ebay.com/itm/251798890596_tr ... EBIDX%3AIT and which cost me a grand total of less than nine bucks, including shipping from China. The shipping twas slow because of Christmas, but the company was as good as gold with my concerns, and the LEDs were exactly as advertised.
I managed to cram 21 LEDs into each flasher unit which, if my calculations are correct, yield a lumen output about twice as bright as the incandescent bulb they replace.
Here's what the units look like after I glued each to a black sheet of plastic and placed them into the lenses. There's a little ridge inside the lens, about 1/4" below the rim. They sit nicely on it.
Then I tackled the tail light, which has two separate circuits, one for the brake light, one for the running light. I removed the incandescent stuff, modified the reflector, then added 30 LEDs for the brake circuit (you can see which they are by their green wires), and 18 LEDs for the running light, plus six on a bracket I made, and which point downward, for the licence plate. Despite this looking like a dog's breakfast, it all fits neatly into the stock housing. I believe the brake light is now about 3X the lumens of the incandescent, and 2X for the running lights.
First a picture of the stock housing....
.....and now of said Dog's Breakfast:
The lights are fantastically bright. I have lots of other detail pictures and will post them if there's any interest here. This is a work in progress, so I have so far only tested them on my battery charger, not on the bike. I'm also in process of putting a ring of 19 LEDs around the inside rim of the headlight, replacing the feeble running light immediately below the headlight. Don't have anything to show yet, but if it works, it will look like an early Audi headlight, or as Jeremy Clarksen described them rather rudely: "they look like a council flat at Christmas". I have learned many things about what you can and cannot do with LEDs, knowledge I'm happy to share.
There's a minefield of LEDs out there, from very bright to very dim, and from cheap to expensive. I barely know my lumens from my amperages, so did a lot of reading and eventually settled on a 5 metre strip of 5050 soft white LEDs which I found on eBay here http://www.ebay.com/itm/251798890596_tr ... EBIDX%3AIT and which cost me a grand total of less than nine bucks, including shipping from China. The shipping twas slow because of Christmas, but the company was as good as gold with my concerns, and the LEDs were exactly as advertised.
I managed to cram 21 LEDs into each flasher unit which, if my calculations are correct, yield a lumen output about twice as bright as the incandescent bulb they replace.
Here's what the units look like after I glued each to a black sheet of plastic and placed them into the lenses. There's a little ridge inside the lens, about 1/4" below the rim. They sit nicely on it.
Then I tackled the tail light, which has two separate circuits, one for the brake light, one for the running light. I removed the incandescent stuff, modified the reflector, then added 30 LEDs for the brake circuit (you can see which they are by their green wires), and 18 LEDs for the running light, plus six on a bracket I made, and which point downward, for the licence plate. Despite this looking like a dog's breakfast, it all fits neatly into the stock housing. I believe the brake light is now about 3X the lumens of the incandescent, and 2X for the running lights.
First a picture of the stock housing....
.....and now of said Dog's Breakfast:
The lights are fantastically bright. I have lots of other detail pictures and will post them if there's any interest here. This is a work in progress, so I have so far only tested them on my battery charger, not on the bike. I'm also in process of putting a ring of 19 LEDs around the inside rim of the headlight, replacing the feeble running light immediately below the headlight. Don't have anything to show yet, but if it works, it will look like an early Audi headlight, or as Jeremy Clarksen described them rather rudely: "they look like a council flat at Christmas". I have learned many things about what you can and cannot do with LEDs, knowledge I'm happy to share.
