Justintoxicated Posted November 17, 2005 Report Share Posted November 17, 2005 (edited) Anyone have an osciliscope in the Long Beach Area? I have run into some issues and I believe these lights may have damaged some other components on my banshee (LED's). I would like to do further investigation, more details to come... Noting is 100% yet so I need to discuss things with trailtech before I can explain what has happened. Also don't plan on running these without a large battery, my battery may be weak, but I could not keep them both light up without giving the banshee some throttle, fresh battery I'm sure they would be fine though but draining at idle for sure. I may have to have a secondary regulator/filter made to keep the rest of the electrical system at or near 12V pics, I took these with my camera but I am not able to Lock aparature size, only ISO and Shutter speed. I snapped 4 pics (2 of each) and they all came out the same. I do not think they accurately portray the HID's but this is what the pics looked like. Trailtech 30 watt HID 13 deg beam Sylvania 50 watt IR 10 deg beam the HID's are definately brighter (despite what you can see in the pics), how much I'm not sure they definately appear brighter due to their whiter color, the IR bulbs look yellow compared to what the cam portrays. I showed my friend and he agreed and was impressed with the HID's. again the HID's are brighter despite the IR's lighting up more area. If I can resolve the issues I have I will take more pics but otherwise it's back to the Halogens for a while. You can DEFINATELY get a good idea of the beams. the IR's have more flood as I suspected, the trailtech reflectors are more of a spot. Funny thng is trailtech HID"s are 13 deg and Sylvania says 10 deg ! but there you have it. I'm sure my neighbors love me for doing this at 10:00! I REALLY wanted to get both lights in the same shot, as this is the easiest way to do a beamshot comparison. But I could not get the Halogens to work at the same time as the IR's... Perhaps if I turn the Halogens on first, with a freshly charged battery, but I had other isses I was more concerned about before ending the testing. Edited November 17, 2005 by Justintoxicated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallrat Posted November 17, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 17, 2005 (edited) I've got an oscilliscope here at my work man. Your problem with the lights not running at the same time is identical to what I was having happen to me on Halloween. Its entirely the battery either being too low or too small. What is it anyway? 4.2AH? I just picked up a 7AH for my bike, now I'm trying to figure out a good place to mount the box I'm making for it. I've got a small battery charger if you wanna do some more testing on that battery. BTW...are those TrailTechs spot, flood, or both? Edited November 17, 2005 by Wallrat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
outlawchico151 Posted November 17, 2005 Report Share Posted November 17, 2005 and were can i order thoes new h.i.d lights? and u put 4 instead of just 2? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justintoxicated Posted November 17, 2005 Report Share Posted November 17, 2005 and were can i order thoes new h.i.d lights? and u put 4 instead of just 2? 438093[/snapback] they are both 13 deg spots, and both IR are 10 deg spots. Maybe the battery is jsut not powerful enough to run 2, but it SHOULD be. I can't see running 4 at this point. The HID's are on backorder but I may be selling mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RATBIKE0130 Posted November 17, 2005 Report Share Posted November 17, 2005 they are both 13 deg spots, and both IR are 10 deg spots. Maybe the battery is jsut not powerful enough to run 2, but it SHOULD be. I can't see running 4 at this point. The HID's are on backorder but I may be selling mine. 438183[/snapback] Justin I can run all 4 of my HID's at the same time. They draw more power than just your two. I have noticed that Trailtech HID's require a minimum of 12 volt to operate. If they voltage drops one of both of the lights will shut off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justintoxicated Posted November 17, 2005 Report Share Posted November 17, 2005 yes, but the right one always shuts off not the left, I'm going to talk to their electrical engineer today hopefully and we can resolve the issue. It might possibly be a bad ballast or something causeing all the other problem, I don't know. With the bike at idle and the battery I should have NO trouble keeping 12V for a 30 watt HID. or even 60 watts for the HIDs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallrat Posted November 18, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 At idle your bike isn't going to be making enough juice so you're going to be running off the battery. If your battery is low then one of em is going to shut off, the first one being the one with the highest resistance. That's why the same light will always turn off first. I finally installed mine tonight and after about 10 minutes of tinkering and snapping pictures the left one started to click off after about 30 seconds. That pattern continued after that and since I knew the battery was almost dead it wasn't any real surprise. I took a bunch of pics which I'll have to wait until I wake up tomorrow to post. Lets just say that the torchlights were NO COMPARISON! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justintoxicated Posted November 18, 2005 Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 At idle your bike isn't going to be making enough juice so you're going to be running off the battery. If your battery is low then one of em is going to shut off, the first one being the one with the highest resistance. That's why the same light will always turn off first. I finally installed mine tonight and after about 10 minutes of tinkering and snapping pictures the left one started to click off after about 30 seconds. That pattern continued after that and since I knew the battery was almost dead it wasn't any real surprise. I took a bunch of pics which I'll have to wait until I wake up tomorrow to post. Lets just say that the torchlights were NO COMPARISON! 438547[/snapback] Cool, we have sceen what the IR can do (not too bad but not quite impressive) no awwww damn factor. Lets see some standard torch pics. Actualy my bike should be making enough juice to run them at idle, it runs the 55 IR's fine (slightly brighter when on the throttle) and the stock headlights don't get any brighter at idle than when Im on the gas due to the stator and high output flywheel. But yea your right, that is what is happening, just worries be about running 2 more of these (I want 4), and I still have the other problems. Looking forward to seeing pics. Mine were 5 second exposures, with ISO locked, but I could nto control aperature setting cause it's just my little digital elph, you have that camera that goes compleatly manual right? Make sure you locked all setting so you can get a better comparison than I did. Or the easiest way to get good beamshots is to take a picture with both lights on at the same time but pointed at different locations the same distance away, and a white wall is preferable if available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RATBIKE0130 Posted November 18, 2005 Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 Cool, we have sceen what the IR can do (not too bad but not quite impressive) no awwww damn factor. Lets see some standard torch pics. Actualy my bike should be making enough juice to run them at idle, it runs the 55 IR's fine (slightly brighter when on the throttle) and the stock headlights don't get any brighter at idle than when Im on the gas due to the stator and high output flywheel. But yea your right, that is what is happening, just worries be about running 2 more of these (I want 4), and I still have the other problems. Looking forward to seeing pics. 438565[/snapback] Justin your IR's don't need 12 volts to keep the ballasts ignited like the HID's do. If your battery is lower than 12 volts the IR's just won't put out all the light possible and get dimmer as the voltage gets lower and lower. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justintoxicated Posted November 18, 2005 Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 Justin your IR's don't need 12 volts to keep the ballasts ignited like the HID's do. If your battery is lower than 12 volts the IR's just won't put out all the light possible and get dimmer as the voltage gets lower and lower. 438577[/snapback] well anyone know a good battery charger for quad? I have my eye on this one? http://www.delcity.net/delcity/servlet/cat...d=789167&page=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallrat Posted November 18, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 (edited) You're running a 4.2AH battery right? Ideally you want to charge at C/10 where C=capacity. So for a 4.2AH battery you should charge it at 0.42A. You can exceed this up to about C/5 (0.84A) but you won't get a full charge and battery life will be decreased. This would be a better choice (link). Still isn't ideal at 0.75A but would put you in the range of C/5. Yeah I used my digital rebel for the pics but using the same apature/shutter speed didn't work out so hot. I took the picture of the torches first letting the camera pick the settings (.8 second @ f4.5). I then put those same settings in and tried taking a picture of the HID's - which came out completely overexposed. As to the guy asking where you can get these. Contact TrailTech at www.trailtech.net. These lights aren't actually in production yet, we got some pre-production models to test out. Last I heard the waiting list was backed up to January. Edited November 18, 2005 by Wallrat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallrat Posted November 18, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 (edited) Good news. The lights don't seem nearly as big once they're mounted. Ok first the pics of the lights mounted. I'm hoping if I do seperate posts that the next pics will go onto the next page. Yeah, yeah...I know my bike is a piece of shit. Edited November 18, 2005 by Wallrat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallrat Posted November 18, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 (edited) Now the pics that really count. Hopefully bikepics.com doesn't erase these... First a picture of the old torches (keep in mind that these are brighter than stock) And now using the exact same camera settings as the previous picture: Hehe...ya that was pretty much useless Let's try adjusting the camera for the amount of light present this time. Notice I haven't even aimed them yet. I had to go work so I only had a few minutes to snap these pics: Seriously. Taking pictures of headlights has to be the most frustrating thing. Now you can see the image, but it looks dimmer than with the torches. Dumb. Very cool effect in this one: So ya there's really no comparison between the HID's and the old torches. It looks in the pictures like there's not as much lighting off to the side. This is actually deceiving. Because the hotspot is so bright the camera has to adjust to that, but as you can see from the first pic with the HID's, the light off to the sides of the hotspot is still WAY brighter than the torches, making almost the whole image white. These are dual spotlights, but they also have floods. IMO, the spots work just fine as the amount of light spilled off to the sides and down in front of my tires is still way more that if I had the torches aimed directly there. If you look at the last pic you can see just how bright the light on the ground is. Notice how sharp the contrast between the lighted area and the bumper's shadow is. Now I just need to get some time off so I can do a ride report... Edited November 18, 2005 by Wallrat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iceman Posted November 20, 2005 Report Share Posted November 20, 2005 those are fuckin bright. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallrat Posted November 21, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2005 I just noticed in that 2nd picture (the one that's all overexposed) you can clearly make out the rusted fuel oil tank about 100 feet away in the upper left corner whereas with the torches its pitch black. Kinda a better indication of how much brighter we're talking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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